Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: forms

There are a number of places. First, let me make the "conservative attorney" pitch - leasing residential and/or commercial property is much more complex than most people believe. The portions of the the Civil Code, for instance, which govern the leasing of residential real estate printed in small type on letter paper is about an inch thick. Many form leases you can buy are worthless and don't address either (1) the particular, specific needs of you, your property and/or your tenant, and (2) don't necessarily include all of the provisions that are required by law, or would be beneficial to you as a landlord. A good real estate attorney can draft a really strong "pro-landlord" lease for you, but it is going to cost you some money. So, with that there are about a hundred places you can get a form lease. Realtors have access to California Association of Realtor form leases - if you know a Realtor, you could ask them to give you a copy. That is at least a lease that has been reviewed by the Association's legal counsel, but is still not a complete or great lease from a landlord's perspective. You can also go to one of the on-line sources such as legalzoom.com. I cannot vouch for those sources as I have never used nor seen their lease agreements. You can go to the local law library, and with some research find one of the real estate leasing treatises such as CEB's California Real Property Practice Forms Manual which contains a variety of lease forms. Finally, and I strongly want to discourage you from doing this, you can buy form leases at places like Staples, Office Depot and stationary stores - these are the weakest thing you can possibly use and you would very likely be better off with just an oral lease at that point. One word of warning - make sure your lease has an attorneys' fee clause in it, or you cannot recover attorneys' fees in evicitons.

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