Category: Leases

Guilt by accommodation?

21 December, 2012 (10:30) | Apartments, Boston, Discrimination, Fair Housing, Landlords, Law, Leases, Real estate taxes, Rental, US News |

By:David A. Smith   Of course we are always judged by the company we keep, but can we be fined for the company we rent to – not for anything they are observed to have done or allowed to be done, but simply because we don’t like the look of the renters?   The not-quite-scarlet [...]

Ask the voters who legalized Mary Jane

26 November, 2012 (17:06) | Apartments, Boston, Enforcement, Inclusionary zoning, Landlords, laws, Leases, marijuana, Massachusetts, Regulation, Rental, torts, Zoning |

By:David A. Smith   By fits and starts, out of fiscal necessity (dressed up in compassion and tolerance) America is legalizing marijuana – and as the collapse of an order is often more chaotic than its establishment, the law we Massachusetts voters just passed is already giving landlords headaches, as revealed in this snickering article [...]

Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion

11 March, 2010 (11:12) | Apartments, Leases, Moving, New York City, Rent control, Tenure, US News |

By David A. Smith   Can you count the times you’ve moved?  Remember how much fun it was?  How long it took you to unpack the final boxes?   Got everything?   Most of us hate moving – and we understand that moving is a sunk cost that yields nothing but emotional, temporal, and economic [...]