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7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Renewing Your Lease With Your Landlord
When it’s time to renew your lease, it’s easy to just sign on the dotted line without giving it much thought. After all, the idea of packing up and moving is exhausting enough to make anyone settle for the status quo.
But before you commit to another year of renting, it’s worth asking yourself a few key questions. Is staying put really the best choice for your lifestyle, finances, and future goals? Or is it time to consider making the leap into homeownership?
Here are seven questions you should ponder before renewing your lease with your landlord:
1) “Is my rent comparable to other rent in the area?”
Before you rented your current place, you probably had a good sense of where it stacked up against other options. But once you’ve been settled in for a while, it’s easy to lose touch with the current options and prices.
Make sure to take a peek online and see how much other places are renting for in the area before renewing your current lease. Your rent may be in line with the market, but if it’s not, perhaps you can find a better place at a better price, or at least have some negotiating power with your landlord.
2) “How much higher is my rent than it was when I first started renting?”
Even if your monthly rent is in line with other places, it’s worth thinking about how much it is compared to when you first started renting there.
If it’s only been a year, the difference may not startle you. But if you’ve been there for 10 years, you might be astonished at how much those yearly increases have added up.
The reality is, rents typically increase over time, and there’s not much you can do to stop that from happening. But it’s worth giving yourself a reality check and starting to think about how you’ll feel in another 10 years if you keep renting.
3) “Is renting getting in the way of living the way I want to?”
Pet Dog GIFfrom Pet GIFs
Pets are a huge source of joy for so many people. Unfortunately, when you rent, you need to live by the rules of the landlord, and many of them don’t allow pets… or at least the one you truly want.
Life is too short to not live the life you want. You might as well ask your landlord to reconsider the policy, and see if they’ll allow you to have the pet you want. If not, perhaps you can find another place that will. Or, maybe it’s time to start making some serious plans to buy your own home.
4) “Is there anything I want the landlord to address or improve?”
To be fair, some landlords want you to tell them about every little issue, and will get things fixed ASAP. But if your landlord isn’t one of them, it’s easy to become a little too used to living with a leaky faucet, a broken window, or disgusting carpets.
If there’s ever a time that you’ll have some leverage to demand that certain things be addressed, it’s when your landlord is looking for your signature on a lease renewal. If they continue to ignore the work that needs to be done, it may be time to look for a new place to rent, or buy a place.
5) “Can I buy my own place… and how much can I afford?”
Many people continue to rent year after year simply because they’re not even aware they could buy a place!
Rather than presume you’re not in a position to buy a home, contact a mortgage lender and ask them to pre-approve you for a mortgage. It’s free, so why not at least find out whether you can, and, if so, how much money they’ll lend you.
6) “Is renting actually more affordable than buying a place?”
If you find out that a mortgage lender will approve you for a loan, it’s also worth doing the math and figuring out if renting is more affordable than buying a home, or vice versa.
Even if renting would be a little (or even a lot) less per month, don’t forget to factor in that your mortgage payment will remain relatively the same year after year if you take out a fixed rate loan, while rents will increase year after year. In addition, you’ll be paying down the amount you owe over time, along with your home increasing in value, so you’ll be building equity.
7) “Can I get out of my lease without paying a penalty if I want to buy a house in the next year?”
One of the reasons many renters continue to rent is because it’s difficult to perfectly time buying a home right around when your lease ends.
If you decide to renew your lease, but you’re even remotely considering buying a place, try and get your landlord to agree to add in a clause that allows you to give a few months notice to get out of the lease if you find a place to buy.
