What's the strangest clause you've seen in a tenancy/property agreement?

MSE_Laura_F

After reading a thread that mentions a freehold with the clause 'no playing piano in the garden', I wondered,

What's the strangest clause you've seen in a tenancy/property agreement?

Murphybear

We had a clause in a tenancy agreement that said we couldn’t have a waterbed.  They hit the jackpot on this one because we did have one.  

After a lot of hoo ha and to-ing  and fro-ing of letters we won the argument that it was an unfair clause.  

Flugelhorn

we are looking at one at the moment that doesn't allow fencing in the property

rexmedorum

We had one where we had to do a professional clean upon moving out and provide receipts. Unfair clause, and I didn't want to do it, but in the end we ran out of time and ended up getting a cleaning company in.

Another one (as students) that we had to maintain the lawn at our costs. What was strange was that the LL arranged and paid for a gardener to do regular lawn maintanance.

theartfullodger

Most daft clauses are unenforceable & can be happily ignored. 

e.g. Clause 1.  Front door must be repainted every January & July in blue, plus Red in April & October.

So tenant doesn't.  What will landlord do? Try to evict for breach of contract (a discretionary ground, i.e. up to judge if he grants possession).  No judge in his right mind would grant possession for beach of such a clause. Landlord has no other option that he wouldn;t have if clause wasn;t there.  Waste of ink & paper. 

Artful: Landlord since 2000

Brie

theartfullodger said:

Most daft clauses are unenforceable & can be happily ignored. 

e.g. Clause 1.  Front door must be repainted every January & July in blue, plus Red in April & October.

Artful: Landlord since 2000

@theartfullodger
was it your clause??  And what did you do when they painted it green and purple???

Falafels

This is an excerpt from the tenancy agreement that my erstwhile tenants had to sign. I had a 'No Pets' policy, but was more than happy to look at it on a case-by-case basis....

"Notwithstanding the provisions of clause 2.41, the Landlord agrees that the Tenant may keep one hamster in the Property, PROVIDED it is kept caged and the Tenant agrees to be responsible and to pay for any damage caused by the said hamster to the Property, its Contents and garden."

The letting agents had put this in because of a specific tenant who did, indeed, have a hamster. I liked it so much I kept it in there.

MaryNB

My friend owns a leasehold and the lease has a clause saying she's not allowed two pianos in her flat. I don't think she could physically get one piano in her flat, never mind two. 

rexmedorum

not a clause but one rental we had sent letters about quarterly inspections, thretening with £125 admin charge if the inspection had to be mved in agressive semi-legal language.

When we were moving out they turned up for a viewing once without giving us notice. I didn't let them in.

Arthog

In our last house, we weren't allowed to brew beer. The house was built on Church land. Friends were not allowed to let the cabbages in their veg plot run to seed. There was a Horticultural Research Station close by.

Skiddaw1

We weren't allowed to sell alcohol or run a dairy. There was also a 'lost covenant', which neither we, nor anyone else on the road, ever got to the bottom of (obviously, it was known as the Ark of the Lost Covenant ).