Rules for renting and renting an apartment legally

Calls based on an ad

It’s rare that someone is lucky enough to call the first ad and immediately find housing. So, if you are seriously concerned about finding an apartment, make yourself a list of suitable options and start consistently communicating with the landlord’s representatives.

In some places you will be lucky to immediately contact the owner, in others a realtor will answer the call. If you don’t mind paying a commission, then the second option will suit you. It’s much worse to stumble upon a realtor who pretends to be the owner. If a person is already deceiving you at this stage, you should not trust him.

To avoid wasting time, ask a few questions about the apartment. If the interlocutor cannot give an answer with confidence or takes long pauses to answer questions that are not answered in the ad, this is most likely a realtor.

If a person already responds to the words “I’m calling about an apartment” and asks again, “Which apartment?” or asks for an advertisement number, everything is completely obvious here: you are dealing with an intermediary.

Whoever you're talking to, ask a few questions:

• How much does the apartment cost and are utilities included in the price? The price may differ from that indicated in the advertisement.
• Is there a commission? Sometimes not only realtors are ready to take it, but also the matchmaker-brother-cousin of the owner, on whose behalf the ad is posted.
• Is the owner ready to bring documents confirming his right to own the apartment?

Remember that at this stage you do not need to pay anyone anything. This is a direct path to becoming victims of a scammer.

Renting an apartment from another person

You can rent and rent out an apartment under another name if you have the permission of the owner. You can draw up a power of attorney to rent out an apartment yourself using a sample. Consulting with our lawyer will help minimize the risk that the landlord will experience fraud when renting out an apartment. A power of attorney is drawn up on behalf of a specific individual or on behalf of a company for its representative.

Read also: Features of making a security deposit when renting an apartment

How to rent an apartment by proxy? The procedure for completing a transaction is similar to that when an agreement is drawn up directly between the owner and the tenant. The main attention should be paid to the content of the document, where the following should be stated:

• passport details of the principal and the person representing him;
• Date of preparation;
• the powers of a citizen that are given to him by the principal;
• signature of the principal.

The principal gives his representative the authority, which includes determining all the parameters suitable for renting an apartment: floor, area, furniture, availability of household appliances and other amenities. The tenant and his authorized representative must first agree on what conditions are suitable for the tenant. If the trustee has doubts, for example, about the amount of payment or about the payment schedule, he can postpone signing the agreement to a later date.

If the owner relies on a power of attorney in all matters regarding how to properly rent an apartment, this must be mentioned in the power of attorney. It also stipulates the right of a citizen to formalize a lease, enter into negotiations or represent the tenant in court if disagreements arise regarding the implementation of the terms of the contract. At the request of citizens, the power of attorney provides for subassignment, that is, the transfer of rights to rent housing to a third party.

First visit

Deception schemes

It is better to familiarize yourself with all the owner’s documents now. This will help protect yourself from several fraud schemes at once:

• The criminals rent an apartment by the day and rent it out for a long period of time, and then disappear with the rent and deposit. Both the owner and the residents find themselves in an unpleasant situation.
• Fraudsters act in conjunction with the owners. The apartment is rented to you by a third party. You give money. But the next day, a supposedly angry landlord shows up and evicts you.
• One of the owners rents the apartment to you. But the co-owner or the landlord's spouse is not happy. And you will have to leave again.

Papers to check

Documents confirming ownership of the apartment

It could be:

• Certificate of ownership, if the property was transferred into possession before July 15, 2021.
• Extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate - for any object.

You can get an extract yourself; for this you need to know the exact address of the apartment. Just fill out the appropriate form on the Rosreestr website. For an electronic statement you will have to pay 400 rubles.

Technically, you can get this information in advance at the apartment address, but it’s a shame to waste 400 rubles. The document will be completed within three working days.

From the extract you can find out how many owners the apartment has and who they are.

It would also be nice if the owner brought a document according to which the right of ownership was transferred to him. It could be:

• Contract of sale.
• Certificate of right to inheritance.
• Property division agreement.
• The court's decision.
• Donation agreement.

This way, the owner of the apartment will undergo a kind of “two-factor authentication.”

Owner's passport

See if the passport data matches those indicated in the statements and contracts. Copy the series and number of your passport to check its validity on the Ministry of Internal Affairs website.

Pay attention to whether the person is married. Check the dates when the property was purchased. If at this time the owner was married, the notarized consent of the spouse is required to rent out the apartment. Otherwise, you can easily be evicted, as the lease agreement will be invalid. If the owner of the apartment is divorced, but was married when he bought it, then ask for a court decision or an agreement on the division of property, according to which the object went to him.

If the housing was inherited or given as a gift, then it is his personal property and the consent of the spouse does not need to be required.

Consent of other owners

The landlord must have written consent from the other owners. Otherwise, they can challenge the contract and demand your eviction at any time.

Features of the contract

How to draw up an agreement for renting an apartment? For the owner, the logical question is: how to rent out an apartment on your own? A form for such a document is available on our website, you can download it and draw up your own sample contract based on the template. When drawing up an agreement, it is necessary to take into account some nuances and discuss all the details. Be sure to include the following items.

Sample rental agreement for residential premises

151.5 KiB 118 Downloads Details

Read also: Procedure for registering a lease with the right of subsequent purchase
Deed of transfer to the rental agreement for residential premises

32.0 KiB 69 Downloads Details

1. Identify the parties, their status: lessor/tenant, indicating full names, information on the basis of which document the owner disposes of the property.
2. Subject of the contract with a description of the characteristics of the apartment: floor, address, how many rooms, which ones, the presence of a separate or combined bathroom, technical characteristics.
3. Rights and obligations of the parties to the transaction.
4. Validity.
5. Rent price.
6. Frequency and method of payments: cash or transfer to card.
7. Payment of utility services. If there are additional services (for example, intercom, landline telephone), then payment for them must be agreed upon.
8. About making a security deposit and its amount.
9. About compensation for damage if, due to the fault of the tenant, household appliances fail or furniture breaks.
10. Special conditions - on the possibility of keeping animals, on early termination of the contract, on the owner’s right to check the condition of the apartment, restrictions on use, etc.
11. Passport details of the landlord and tenant, signatures, telephone numbers, indication of the date of the transaction.

The agreement is accompanied by an apartment acceptance certificate, which includes an inventory of the property, copies of the parties’ passports, as well as a payment schedule. The attachments are not mandatory, but for the owner’s peace of mind it is better to prepare these documents as well. How to rent an apartment correctly so that one side does not deceive the other? The main condition is that all details of the relationship are mentioned in the contract. On our website you can, where the maximum number of conditions of such an agreement is listed.

After the first visit

This is where your passport information, which you carefully copied, will come in handy. Check to see if the owner of the apartment is on the blacklist of landlords. Usually, the corresponding lists are easy to find on social networks or on specialized websites.

In addition, break it through the database of the Justice system. This way you will find out whether this person is suing a lot and because of what - maybe just because of the right to the apartment he is renting out.

This way you will protect yourself not only from scammers, but also simply from unpleasant people.

What to do when a person lives in an apartment

Pay taxes

Every year, before April 30, it is necessary to submit a declaration to the tax service in Form 3-NDFL. In it you indicate all income for the previous year, including money from renting out an apartment. It is necessary to attach the lease agreement and documents confirming receipt of funds - receipts or bank statements.

Personal income tax in the amount of 13% of income must be paid before July 15 of the year following the reporting period.

Please note that if utility bills are included in the rental price, you will also have to pay personal income tax on this amount. So it makes sense in the agreement to separate these two payments and accept them in two transfers.

Signing the contract

If you like everything, it’s time to fill out the contract. Life hacker told me how to do this. It is important that the document contains the following information:

• Rent period (so you can't be evicted tomorrow).
• Conditions for eviction. Indicate how long before the owner must inform you to vacate the apartment.
• Passport data and information from documents confirming ownership.
• The amount of money that you gave to the owner upon moving in and which he must return to you upon departure. Separately state the conditions under which the homeowner can withhold part of the deposit. There must be reasons for such a decision; the desire to make money from you is not enough.
• Inventory of things. Indicate how many chairs, chandeliers and teapots were in the apartment, so that you do not later face a requirement to compensate for the lack of gold toilets.

Make sure that the owner gives you the keys to all locks. Otherwise, it may happen that you will not be able to get into the apartment. Ideally, you should replace the locks in case the previous occupants had copies. But this can only be done with the permission of the owner. He will need to give duplicates.

The possibility of sub-tenancy must be indicated in the tenancy agreement.

Let's consider a transaction between individuals - a lease and sublease agreement. If the personal circumstances of the tenant change and his desire to vacate the premises from the owner (landlord), as compensation for termination of the transaction, a security deposit in the amount of one month's rent is usually left, which is paid by the tenant when signing the rental agreement along with an advance payment for the first or first months of rent. If for some reason it is impossible to terminate the contract, the tenant can follow the path of a sublease agreement.

In the luxury real estate market, the parties always include a clause on sublease (sublease) in the contract, which states that the tenant does not have the right to sublease the apartment without the written consent of the landlord. Rent and lease by law imply the possession and use of property during the term of the contract, but not its disposal. And transactions with sublease or sublease are already the disposal of property belonging to a third party. The fact is that initially the owners of luxury real estate have a number of requirements for the employer, and the agency sometimes searches for a suitable person or family for several months, and sometimes up to a year. Therefore, it is unlikely that it will be possible to simply want to rent out an apartment quickly and profitably. The task becomes more complicated if your rental agreement is for a period of more than one year and was registered in accordance with Part 2 of Article 674 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation in Rosreestr. The sublease agreement will also need to be registered if the contract is for a period of more than a year and you have received the landlord’s consent to the sublease.

You can protect yourself in the event of a sublease by thoroughly checking the tenant and stipulating in the sublease agreement restrictions on the use of residential premises: for example, it is not allowed to smoke or keep dogs or other pets in the apartment. Often the contract specifies a list of persons with passport data who will permanently reside in a given apartment, even if they are not tenants under the contract.

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