When you’re trying to think of ways to customize your rental home, you need to keep in mind that the customizations can’t affect your lease agreement or affect a deposit. For example, in most cases you can’t change the structure, the electrical, plumbing or other permanent changes when the lease states that it’s not to be altered.

When you take in security deposits, you’re telling a tenant that you need a buffer in case they don’t pay their rent or damage something on your property. You need something in the bank in case the tenant takes off and breaks their lease or damages something that is going to need repaired. When you take in a security deposit and your tenant doesn’t do anything wrong to require you to keep it, how are you supposed to come up with that cost to pay them back after move out?

You’ve probably worked hard to maintain a rental property with clean floors, freshly-painted walls and appliances in good working order. When it passes from one tenant to the next, the landlord hopes that the tenant will keep everything in good running order. Part of that expectation means that you as the landlord may want to provide some specific tools to help keep the property in top-notch quality.