I am starting to get things together to lease our house and want to make sure all my bases are covered with the addendum for pool responsibility.

Anything you have learned over the years that doesn't seem obvious? Tenants will be responsible for paying for pool service obviously. Luckily this pool is super easy to care for which should be a selling point. Was there any specific verbiage you used to protect yourself from issues that may arise from tenants, whether damage or injury?

That may be how I work it, I am not sure. I dont necessarily want to scare people away from the house because I add an additional $X up front. People are so accustomed to fees I feel like you may get more peoples foot in the proverbial door with a lower rent and pool maintenance cost as an additional fee. We will see, they are paying one way or another. Right now I am just curious about legal protection and responsibility and the way other landlords have managed that.

I'm really not concerned about that aspect of it. Whether they pay my guy directly or I pay him, it will be paid for by the tenant. If someone balks at that, I won't let them live here. I know they won't care for it like i would. That is a no Brainer.

most of the listings I see for rentals with a pool, granted it seems to be property management groups, but they say "if the property has a pool there will be a $150 maintenance fee added to monthly rent".

I recently had this scenario and included pool service in the rent. As the owner, I want to have control to make sure the pool is maintained.

Did you put anything in additionally about liability or additional rules in an addendum? Do you have additional insurance? I just want to make sure we have our bases covered liability wise. Did you say anything about having to let you know about any issues with the pool in X amount of time or the tenant is liable? Like if the robot or pump craps out and they don't alert you in 48 hours or something? Anything absolvong you of personal injury liability? We have a katchakid and could potentially say that katchakid must be installed when pool is not in use. Whether it is or not is either here nor there, but if someone gets hurt and it wasn't on amd they weren't swimming, then that would release us.

I'm just trying to think of ways we could be screwed by a tenant and preemptively unscrew ourselves.

Liability was the reason we sold a rental w pool.

Interesting topic. We passed on a great house because we were afraid of the pool liability. We never got as far as checking with our insurance agent, just figured it would be an additional headache/risk that we don't need.

It seems like there would have to be some additional coverage + some wording absolving you from blame or responsibility should something happen to your tenants or their guests.

That last paragraph is exactly what I'm wondering about. There is an addendum TXR 2010 but I dont seem to have access to the page to get it so I am asking a friend to grab it for me.

Maybe a separate section that requires an initial so you're sure they read it, understand it & agree.

Yea I think I will put several initial blocks next to the sections in that form. I just read it over and it seems pretty good. Thats a great idea, thank you.

You're welcome - if we ever buy a house with a pool, I'm gonna hit you up for a copy.

OP, may want to consider an umbrella policy too due to the increased liability of a pool. It would be a shame for someone to get hurt and come after you (which they would). A $1MM umbrella policy isn't expensive.

Also, have you thought about instituting rules against the tenant having pool parties with more than X number of guests?

Where is this rental?
I may be in the market.

Email me at username 2121 at Gmail.

Kinda tough because you already own it but I don't think I could do it. They're death traps for young kids. Even if you're tenants don't have kids, all it would take is one, friends over back yard bbq with some drunk irresponsible parents and you could have a dead 2yo on your hands. I wouldn't want that on me and lawsuits are life drainers, even when you are in the right.

If you're absolutely going to do it, id put up one of the black metal fences around the pool itself.

Pool has a katchakid net and it is not heated. I will be writing a provision that the katchakid net has to be installed when pool is not in use. There's no reason for it to be off from say October to April.

Like someone else mentioned, I will also be getting an umbrella policy, something that I have been meaning to do for a while anyways.

CS78 said:

---

Kinda tough because you already own it but I don't think I could do it. They're death traps for young kids. Even if you're tenants don't have kids, all it would take is one, friends over back yard bbq with some drunk irresponsible parents and you could have a dead 2yo on your hands. I wouldn't want that on me and lawsuits are life drainers, even when you are in the right.

If you're absolutely going to do it, id put up one of the black metal fences around the pool itself.

---

I'm with you. I don't think I could do it.