Rental 'Contract' Suggestions?

For months I've gotten requests from folks asking to live on my various properties. If they're friends I let them set up a home for free- but generally I turn folks down. Well I've decided to give renting a try. I am interested in ensuring that my tenants are good neighbors, and as such I've decided to write up some guidelines I expect them to follow, to minimize their negative impact on the sim. (Note that my current rental properties are all mainland/no covenant, but a rental-only island is in the works.)

Below are the guidelines I've come up with. Do you have any suggestions of your own? I'd love to hear them.

1. No shouting objects (i.e. scripts that use llShout).
   
2. No political propaganda in publicly viewable areas.
   
3. No public-facing advertisements (signs inside stores, only viewable to people in the store, are okay).
   
4. In PG properties, no obscene or adult material at all.
   
5. No camping chairs or other incentives to get people on your property to artificially drive up traffic.
   
6. No casinos.
   
7. No building within 0.5 meters of parcel border.
   
8. No terraforming within 1 meter of parcel border.
   
9. Restrict spamming items (notecard givers, landmark givers, greeters) so that their range is limited to your parcel.
   
10. You can only maintain a Ban list, you cannot have an Access list (this is controlled by the land group settings). If you need privacy, use a security device, but its range must be limited to your parcel.
    
11. Sound-generating objects must be limited to your parcel (i.e. spatialized sound setting in About Land).

What else?

Particles?

You might want to clarify what 'adult' means. Like 'no genitals' or something. Some people will want to argue with you on this so just be clear up front.

Maybe also say that shouting people isn't appreciated. I see more people shouting than objects shouting.

Ah particles, yes.

Well the "adult" stuff is hard for me to define. (And I wouldn't mind assistance here.) I was mainly thinking, no dirty photographs or artwork on PG property, and no publicly accessible sex toys or activity.

I would prefer that even on my Mature land that people would restrict nudity and naughty play to private areas, but don't know if that's unreasonable... and don't know how detailed I should get in my restriction here.

Also, yeah, people shouldn't shout in residential areas. Thank you.

You can be as restrictive as you want - it's your land and if people don't like the rules, they don't have to live there.

I don't think you need to go into graphic detail - the rules don't have to read like a XXX story unless, of course, that's the audience you're going for. What you said above is probably pretty close to good.

If your parcels are big enough, maybe also mention that chat goes for 20m - if somebody is into fooling around out in the shed, that's fine but keep the shed off the parcel border..

I'd add 'No High Lag Scripted Items'. I've often come back to the sim I primarily rent out to find a motorcycle or automobile or hovercraft that has lagged out the sim just by idling on the land.

You've focused on behavior and scripts restrictions. How about building restrictions? Such as tall contructions, low floating skyboxes, architecture that clashes with surroundings, and other constructions that become an eyesore. Just an idea.

I'm going to send you over a copy of my covenant and the rules for the Plaza on Urbane, we went over and over the rules and have tweaked them since the addition of covenants.

One thing that jumps out to me is no restriction on temp-on-rez.

Dnel would you mind shooting me a copy too. We still have a few mainland parcels that we have been tempted to rent out and this might give us a good idea what to expect.

Thanks

Out of curiosity, why are people reluctant to post their covenants / rental contracts? I'd love to see them posted here, or links to them. Clearly, as written works, they fall under copyright, but I don't see why looking at them to get ideas should be a problem.

Anshe Chung's Dreamland covenants can be found on the web.

Other things you might want to include, although they are more "rental agreement" and less "covenant" are refund policies, late payments, etc.


Here's what I came up with last week for my mainland rentals.

Keep is simple. Most people don't read it. Put the important points at the start of the contract and then the finer detail at the end. It should be no more than a maximum of 1 page and simple English. SL is a multi-culture society, make it simple.

You can read anyone covenant simply by visiting the sim and getting the 'About Land' of any parcel.

You're right, and this is mainly because it's hard for me to define 'eyesore.' I mean, you know one when you see one, but there are so many ways people can uglify their land! I do think it would be good for me to have some building guidelines though.

Also, thanks very much to Dnel- will check that out as soon as I'm in-world again. I will also try to track down Anshe's covenants.

"My word is final, no arguments!"

Anything else needed?

I just wanted to add that you have an awful lot of very restrictive rules there and you'll probably end up spending half your life enforcing them. I have a rental sim with just one rule, no commercial activity and my renters couldn't even follow that rule. I ended up letting it slip because I wasn't paying constant attention and now the whole thing has devolved into shops and clubs and stuff. Very unfortunate but my own fault.

I made a pretty simple rule: "No activity that disturbs the neighbours." Now it's up for them to complain.

You can write up what you want, but as a rule most tenants don't read the darn notecards anyway.

And Elanthius has a very good point: Do you want to spend your time in-world enforcing a ton of rules? That's why I did what I did: Somebody complains, I act. Otherwise I just let things be.

For example one of my tenants opened a casino ... in a 512 sq plot at that. However, since in terms of popularity the joint would make a graveyard look like Grand Central Station in comparison, I just go laissez-faire.

This is my feeling.. although a bit extreme to make a point I'm sure. I think you've got too many specifics as it is. If it is a residential sim, then a simple statement should suffice: "<sim name> is a Residential community, and no commercial activity will be permitted." By spelling out so many specifics, you're opening the door to the classic "well your rules don't say I can't do this" argument. Lay down an overall description of the expected atmosphere and resident behavior in the covenent/rental agreement, with maybe a few examples here and there of DOs and DONTs.. and worry about the specifics on a case by case basis.

Probably the best time to get into the details is during your interview process.. If you take the time to hand select your residents, and have an actual conversation with them prior to allowing them to rent, I think your community will end up being much lower maintanence over all, and you'll have less worries about hovering freeby beach houses, and other annoying things. If people just pay the hippo tech box and start carrying on, without ever meeting you, a list of rules 5 miles long won't be nearly as effective as that initial interview would have been.