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Unpopular opinion: reading my lease twice a year is the only legal advice I'll ever trust
I was sitting at a cafe in Sacramento last week when a couple at the next table started arguing about a $200 pet deposit their landlord kept. The guy kept saying "we never signed anything about that" while the girl pulled up a photo of the lease clause on her phone. It hit me that almost every housing fight I've seen comes down to someone not knowing what they actually agreed to. I started reading my own lease every 6 months now, and I caught a late fee that got bumped from $50 to $75 without anyone telling me. Who else actually reads theirs, or am I the only one doing this?
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grace_wright1mo ago
Reading it twice a year might be more often than you need, but the part about catching changes is real. Leases usually say the landlord has to give you written notice before raising fees, so if that late fee jumped without notice, that could be a violation in a lot of states. The catch is that some leases have a clause letting them change certain terms with just a notice posted somewhere, and people miss that line. Worth checking what your lease says about how they're allowed to tell you.
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