Limiting Smoking in the Lease

Owners frequently want you to put a ‘non smoking stipulation’ in the lease to prevent tenants from stinking up their property. Managers have learned ‘you never to add a stipulation to a lease you have no system in place to monitor it and really can’t enforce,’ and a non-smoking stipulation is one of them. If the owner insists, you need to have them sign a disclosure that although you’ll accommodate them and add it to the lease, there is no way to enforce it. Make sure they don’t have a case against you for failure to enforce a lease that You Can’t Enforce, when the tenant violates the stipulation and leaves smoke smells throughout the property. This provides a way to give them what they want but protect yourself when it doesn’t work.