Renting out your unit

Many declarations limit the number of units that may be rented at any one time. The cap exists partly for community reasons and substantially for financing ones: lenders look at owner-occupancy ratios, and a community over a threshold can become harder to buy into and harder to sell in.

• Find the rental provision in the declaration and check for amendments — rental caps are among the most frequently amended provisions there are.
• If the cap is full there is usually a waiting list, and it usually has to be observed in order.
• Board approval before letting is commonly required, on the terms the documents set.
• There may be exceptions — hardship, a defined period after inheritance, an owner relocating temporarily. They are narrow and they are written down.

Signing a lease before confirming you are permitted to let is the mistake that causes real damage, because the association’s remedy runs against the owner while the tenancy runs against the tenant.

Nightly and vacation letting is treated differently from a long-term tenancy by almost everyone involved: many declarations prohibit or restrict it outright, most standard HO-6 policies exclude it as a business activity, and local ordinance may license or limit it independently of the association.

Assume it is not permitted until you have read the provision that permits it.

• A term making the tenancy subject to the declaration, bylaws and rules, and requiring the tenant to comply with them.
• Acknowledgement that the association may enforce the rules directly against the tenant where the documents allow it.
• Your contact details as landlord, and a route to reach you that works when you are away.

Give the association the tenant’s name and contact details and a copy of the lease if the documents require it. In an emergency the association needs to reach whoever is in the unit, and an out-of-date roster costs time nobody has.

• The assessment obligation. It is yours, not the tenant’s, whatever the lease says between you.
• Responsibility for the tenant’s conduct and for damage they cause, in most declarations.
• Everything the declaration makes the owner responsible for maintaining.
• Voting rights, unless the documents expressly assign them to a tenant, which is unusual.

A standard HO-6 is written for an owner-occupied unit. Letting changes the risk and usually needs an endorsement or a different policy; short-term letting frequently needs a specialist product. Non-disclosure is a common reason a claim is denied — see the insurance guide.