Free printable · before you sign a lease
Free Lease Red-Flags Checklist
A lot of what a lease costs you shows up at move-out, in terms you agreed to at move-in. Not because the terms were hidden, but because a lease arrives at the end of a search, with a deadline attached, and it runs to fourteen pages of numbered paragraphs written by somebody else's lawyer. This free printable is the residential-lease band from the full kit: thirty things to check, each with what the clause usually says and what it costs you if you sign it as written. Print it, sit down with the lease, and work down it.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Lists 30 lease clauses worth checking — deposit deductions, the mandatory monthly add-ons that are not in the advertised rent, auto-renewal notice windows, early-termination liability, who pays for repairs, and joint and several liability if you are sharing.
- Gives each one a severity, so a deal-breaker outranks a nuisance, and says plainly what it costs you if it is there and you sign it.
- Marks the case nobody expects: a lease that is SILENT on a point can cost as much as one with a bad clause — without a stated default, what happens next depends on local law and on who pushes harder.
- Includes a worked example page — five filled lines from a fictional lease — so you can see the level of note-taking that makes a review useful in the leasing office rather than a week later.
- Prints to 8 pages — a four-page checklist, a worked example, and an honest comparison against the full kit. Stores nothing: no email, no signup, no account, and it never asks for a Social Security number, a bank detail or an ID number.
Related reading
Own it, don't rent it
Want the version that scores it and does the money?
This sheet is one contract type out of six, and it can only hold a list. The full Contract & Deposit Red-Flags Review Checklist carries 180 curated red flags — venue, lease, contractor, home purchase, vehicle and auto-renewing memberships — and adds the column this page leaves out: the wording to ask for instead. Its seven-tab workbook (Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice) then weighs what you found by how much it matters, tracks your deposit against the contract's own cancellation ladder to show what canceling today would cost, logs every promise the document contradicts or never mentions, and reads it all back on one dashboard.
A one-time purchase you keep and own — for this contract, and the next one, and the one after that.
A structured review — not legal advice. It does not tell you whether a clause is enforceable, and it does not replace a lawyer. Contract law and consumer protections differ by state and country, and a clause that is void in one place is routine in another. The example lease, landlord and amounts are fictional. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.