{"id":12,"date":"2026-09-25T06:42:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T03:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/before-you-sign-a-lease\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T06:42:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T03:42:25","slug":"before-you-sign-a-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/before-you-sign-a-lease\/","title":{"rendered":"Before you sign a lease: five clauses to check"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lease is usually signed in a hurry, on the landlord&#8217;s standard form. Five clauses decide almost every dispute we see later, so read these before you sign.<\/p>\n<h2>The five clauses<\/h2>\n<p><strong>1. Term and renewal.<\/strong> Is renewal automatic, and how much notice does either side need to give?<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Rent increases.<\/strong> Look for when the rent can rise, by how much, and how you will be told.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Deposit.<\/strong> How much, when it comes back, and what may be deducted from it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. Maintenance.<\/strong> Who pays for which repairs, and how quickly they must be done.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. Early exit.<\/strong> What it costs to leave before the end of the term, for you and for the landlord.<\/p>\n<h2>One habit that helps<\/h2>\n<p>Photograph the property on the day you receive the keys and send the photos to the landlord. It is the simplest evidence you will ever have.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sample article for the Tothiq Professional demo. It is not legal advice.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lease is usually signed in a hurry, on the landlord&#8217;s standard form. Five clauses decide almost every dispute we see later, so read these before you sign. The five clauses 1. Term and renewal. Is renewal automatic, and how much notice does either side need to give? 2. Rent increases. Look for when the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothiq.ai\/demo\/tothiq-professional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}