Retroactive lease
Our tenants have no lease, but have asked for one to bolster their paper trail to the INS (one of the couple is foreign-born). i know leases are ‘good’ for both parties, but they’ve already been here for over 6 months. so should the lease be retroactive to their move-in date or should it start…
Our tenants have no lease, but have asked for one to bolster their paper trail to the INS (one of the couple is foreign-born). i know leases are ‘good’ for both parties, but they’ve already been here for over 6 months. so should the lease be retroactive to their move-in date or should it start now? i don’t want to get locked into a year lease now that we’re already 6 months into it, since we may need to increase the rent before that. a retroactive lease would be better it seems (and would look better to the INS), but would that be fraudulent?
You can make the lease retroactive, just don’t backdate the signatures.
FYI My little brother had INS troubles. His green card was no longer valid because he never got the new one with the picture & fingerprinting. he couldn’t leave the country for a few years nor get his drivers license because he was officially undocumented, which was a big pain. But, that said it didn’t seem like his INS people were evil like the officers you run into sometimes, they were just extreemely overworked. Anything that allows them to quickly check off an item on their long lists of requirements will help the process along. About two and a half years into the process my brother got a letter that said they had verified his immigration status, then another six months later they issued him a new green card so he could get his drivers license and also apply for financial aid for college.
The funny thing is my brother has actually qualified for citizenship since the day he was born, but our parents never filled out the overseas birth to a US Citizen paperwork. Even the ‘nice’ INS people are overzealus about your papers being in order.
11:37 is correct under no circumstances should you back date the signatures. I just had a go round with the INS myself, and was only asked to provide my current address. No questions about how long I’d lived at my current address, my previous address or if I owned or rented. Different visas may have different requirements….just thought I’d mention it.
That’s correct, just say the “effective date” of the lease is the date they moved in. Sign and date the lease the date you actually sign (i.e. don’t back date it).
Yup. I’d look at it as documenting a verbal agreement that was already in place. Aint no biggie.
it doesn’t matter, whatever you and your tenants agree on is fine