Legal blues

To be frank, I was never really careful about the legal documents. The only legal document I have so far handled is the Rental Agreement. When the first time I saw the rental agreement, that legal language amused me to no end. But not anymore.

I had a real good experience of a typical House Owner here. I had been renting houses for a while now, but I have never seen such a shrewd type before. May be because all these days I was dealing with people, who had bought houses for themselves. But this fella is truly into the money making business. He has build houses just for the renting purpose and he ensures that he makes a real good business out of it.

His agreement contained some good long 30+ clauses, most of them I had never heard of before. There were routine things about renting, sub-renting, advance, rent payment date, maintenance of property etc. etc., but there were some queer things as well. I must admit that I was rather careless while signing the agreement, though I did ask about some of the clauses. For example, there was a clause about Painting the House. When I asked, he explained that if the paint goes bad, I will have to pay for painting the house. Which sounded pretty ok at that time. I was not planning to stay there for long and I knew for sure that the paint won't go bad.

But now that I have decided to move, he is asking for grand 5k to paint the house. It's kind of annoying since that house is just 8 months old and the paint is as good as new. He insists that the new tenant (non existing!) would want it to be painted. In any case, HE wants to get it painted. There is no way this guy is going to get convinced, since whenever I argue, he simply points out to the agreement paper. The agreement says I will pay for the paint or get it painted (even if it has not gone bad).

ARGH.

He did teach me my lesson.

:-/