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What To Do Before Putting Your Electronic Signature on the Lease

Written by Anna Brinkkötter Posted On Saturday, 17 July 2021 19:25
What To Do Before Putting Your Electronic Signature on the Lease

Once you’ve found that perfect apartment, condo, or even house to rent, you want to get the paperwork done as quickly as you can so that you can make sure the lease is yours. But not so fast! Once you have your copy of the lease, here are some additional steps you’ll want to take before you send it back with your (electronic) signature.

1. Read Your Lease in Full

This is a step a lot of people know you are supposed to do, but you’d be surprised by how many people do not bother to read the lease. You absolutely want to read the lease because sometimes things which are not mentioned in person but are important are included there. 

These could be rules about garden maintenance, noise levels at night, the right to evict at short notice, or a whole variety of things. In some jurisdictions, what you sign can be legally binding even if it disagrees with general laws because you signed on the dotted line. So, read your lease. Google or read up on anything you don’t understand.

2. Re-read the Lease to be Safe

Definitely re-read your lease. Reading it once is not enough. Don’t re-read it right away though. Maybe mark passages the first time and after a few hours or a night’s rest, re-read it. Sometimes when you do this you’ll realize you forgot about a detail you wanted to ask about and you can mark it or write it down somewhere. 

You may also notice that some of the wording isn’t as clear as you thought reading it the first time, and you want to ask questions about those sections.

3. Call and Ask Questions

Call up your realtor or the prospective landlord and go through your questions. It doesn’t really matter what it’s about or how silly your question may seem to you. You’re doing this for more than one reason. First, you need to know the answers before signing. 

Second, if the landlord is the type of person who doesn’t want to answer your questions before you sign the contract, then that’s something else you definitely want to know. After all, where are they going to be when a pipe bursts or there’s a problem with a neighbor? You want to know you can talk to them about something potentially difficult before you sign. 

Think of this as a test-drive of your future landlord. Absolutely do it, even if you dread having this conversation. You need to know these things before you agree to pay this person every month and deal with them regularly.

4. Renegotiate

If there is room to negotiate and you want to, go ahead and try. Be careful of testing a future landlord’s patience though. You may think of yourself as a great haggler, but they may walk away from the deal if they don’t like negotiating. They’re allowed to do that. At the same time, if you have a light touch and you think they’d be open to negotiation, then you can always try to get a little off every month or to alter some of the conditions if there are some that aren’t ideal (like if you want to get a dog but it’s no pets allowed). 

After this conversation, though, you need to get on with signing and returning the document. So, accept the conditions, amend the lease document after successful negotiations, or walk away from the property.

5. Sign

Finally, you need to sign the document. Even before the pandemic, electronic or digital signatures were in growing demand. And there are many companies that have gone paperless. Therefore, you’ll want to use a service that lets you sign quickly and easily, with strong security and encryption, since you probably can’t sign in person. What’s nice about it is you can request other people’s signatures easily, you can save your signature for future use if you like, it’s eIDAS compliant and has military grade encryption. 

It’s a good choice for both signing a document when you’re ready and sending  the lease on to your new landlord afterward. It goes to them right away, and sends the signed version back to you, so you’ll know the deal is done right away and have your own copy of your lease. Save copies of it in a few safe places!

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Author Bio: Anna Brinkkötter is a German copywriter and law student with a passion for digital tools and software. She enjoys helping people find solutions to problems wherever she can with her expertise from a variety of industries and positions.

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