The rental lease is a time-honored tradition and mutual legal protection between landlords and their tenants. The lease defines the responsibilities of both parties; from the security deposit terms to the landlord's duty to provide timely repairs. While the tenant has a chance to look over the lease before signing, ultimately it's up to the landlord to draw up a lease that not only covers the basics but also covers all bases in the landlord-tenant relationship.

Home Maintenance Expenses

For many people, there's a surprising gap between buying a house and being prepared to maintain it. Especially for anyone buying investment property and is new to the landlording business.

How to Attract New Apartment Residents

Property managers must be always prepared for the continual changes that flood the multi-housing industry. In fact, the property manager's role has not only evolved in the last decade, but it has expanded as well. No longer do they just collect rent but have a host of other jobs as well. That means they must be versed in a variety of skills. From digital expertise to marketing to legal documents and insurance, property managers wear many hats. The juggling of tasks makes it necessary to be capable of multi-tasking. However, more than that, property managers must have an eye toward the future trends so that they can step up to the plate and proactively stay ahead of the game. With that in mind, we checked in with the Property Management Insider for a peek at their trend predictions for 2018 and provide some tips to help you keep on top of what's coming.

Property management is a complex balancing act between the owner, the property, and the tenants who live there. Officially you're in charge of taking care of the property but in reality, you are also responsible for acquiring and managing tenants, keeping the property maintained, and working with the client owners to get important or financial decisions approved. Between the inspections, work orders, and being a de-facto landlord, this can stack up an impressive amount of paperwork that must all be organized, tracked, and quickly referenced should they be needed for anything later on. Handling all these documents can take up hours of your time every week, especially if you're still working with physical paperwork or a simple personal files system. Either way, your job could be a lot easier simply by taking advantage of one of many available online document management apps, sometimes called a DMS (document management system).

In San Diego County, a security deposit is a fee, deposit or charge imposed at the beginning of a tenancy that is intended to reimburse the landlord for damages, cleaning and defaults on rent as provided under California Civil Code § 1950.5. This fee is built into the tenant/landlord relationship to ease the risk a property owner takes in allowing the tenant to have largely unmonitored access and use of the rental property.