Leasing agreement

I am thinking about leasing out my land. For those of you who are experienced with this, should I make the contract/agreement with what I want the renter to abide by, or should he draw one up and bring it to me to sign? What is common practice? Should I make the agreement to specify lanes i want left, erosion control,etc?

If you want any control of anything,waterways,buffer zones, retain hunting rights or the right to lease hunting rights, does he drive across your lawn to get to a field our will he use the lane 1/4 mile down the road. The more you have in writing the better you will get along with your renter.

University extension generally has blank forms with many of those details shown as options.

Gerald J.

It is your land, make the contract what you want it to be. The common practice is to have the renter draw up the contract, but who cares, it is ok to be different. Be specific about what you want farmed and conservation practices you require. Renters are easy to find, land to rent not so. On my moms land her farmer (wheat)every year took more of the grass around the farmstead, fenceline and waterways. He has a 5 year lease. His roundup drifted into the trees. I talked to him about this several times with no results. So I put a bunch of junk like coils of barbed wire, woven wire, old plows or whatever in the grass. It only took one time when his new air seeder got all wrapped up in barbed wire for him to respect the grass, land he wasn't renting anyway.

'Here' you wight end up looking like a pretty fussy person & going to be hard to deal with if you specify a lot of details in a land lease.

But - if that is the control you want on your land, then yes you need to draw it up with what you want done, as others have said. Mowing the grassy areas for hay or weed control is also something to specify. Then will you be renting total acres, or only farmable acres? Need to specify on how it's billed.

A renter will be interested in number of years, how lime & fertilizer applications are handled, if the land is tilled this fall & how he needs to leave it at the end of the contract.

Will this be sharecrop, or cash? Must be 95% cash rent any more around 'here'. Soil tests & land mining of nutrients are a bigger issues than field roads & waterways, but that is 'here'.

--->Paul

As a landowner, I say go ahead and make your own rental agreement. NOTHING is worse than having such a loose agreement that your renter can do whatever he wants. Not to bag on renters, 95% of them are good, but occasionally you get a screwball who plows out all of your waterways and plants up to the tree line and starts to cut out into your yard. Set the ground rules up front. Especially with regard to hunting rights, too.

There is two ways to do this. First is get a local university template and fill it out the way you want it or drop a few hundred bucks and get you lawyer to write one up. It will be 6+ pages long and cover every thing that could possibly come up. Then you put an add in a few local papers, take bids till a given date and the highest bidder wins. (Read on another forum last year when folks were going nuts that a land owner held an actual auction, even charged folks $1,000 for the chance to bid, and had over 50 pay. That will go a ways on property taxes on it's own!!!) You will always have close to the top dollar on rent because you don't want to go out past 3 or 5 years, then take bids again.

Or you could look around your local area. Find some one who takes good care of his landlords, works hard, and is good for their word. Ask them to come over to the house one rainy day and yall set down at the kitchen table with a piece of note book paper, work things out like men, sign, and copy.

As a land owner, it's your choice. Develop a relationship with a local person who will be loyal to you or just be one of checks a BTO writes twice a year for 3 years at time.

Dave

Your local Extensition Agent has an rental agreement.

I have done it both ways. For one renter, I took a lease from a university extension web site and modified it for my purposes. The other renter provided a lease. I have had no problems with either renter, so I can't say which is better.

I think the important thing is to know your renter. Talk to his other landlords. Look at his fields, both owned and rented.

It's pretty likely that some situation will arise that isn't covered in the lease. For example, who gets paid if someone puts a pipeline across your property? I felt that the renter should get all the damages and I should receive payment for the easement; naturally he felt differently. (I kept the easement payment, by the way.)

Our cash rent lease states the tenant is leasing only the tillable land with the legal description stated, the tenant will bear all costs of crop production, neither party will incur any expenses to be charged to the other party, the tenant understands the landlord will not carry any insurance coverage on tenant's property and equipment, etc.

Your local County Extension Office or bank should have a blank form that can be modified for your purposes. It's best to have too many minor points in writing than not enough.

Regardless if you use an Attorney to draft one or get a form/template from a local ag office (your land and money, your free choice to use a professional or a form/template of from a neighbor or "brother in law") I can give you a little free legal advise: In contract disputes a Court will construe a contract STRONGER "AGAINST" THE PARTY WHO PREPARED IT.

The doctrine of "four corners" applies and basically a Court ONLY fills in the blanks IFFFFFFFF an ambiguity exists. If the contract is clear and easily understandable with no holes, the doctrine of freedom of contract, which unfortunately is loosing favor in some jurisdictions, SAYS YOU ARE BOUND BY YOUR AGREEMENT still subject, however, to all sorts of legal "run arounds".

Its important that BOTH parties UNDERSTAND the agreement and when drafting I use plain ordinary language and if theres any harsh penalty type sounding clauses (Courts arent a fan of some of those) I DO NOT hide them but put them in BOLD PRINT and even have a place for both parties signatures.

The reality is regardless if a Philly Attorney prepares it or a form is used good or poor, any relief sought can be a pain and/or more costly then the ailment. Its the good will and values of the parties thats FAR MOREEEEEEEEEEEEE important then any piece of paper.....

John T Attorney at Law

Around here a ground lease and hunting lease are completely separate things. Maximum one year. Legal forms are available online.

If its not spelled out in the lease you probably wont get it/keep it. But, a lot depends on your local situation. If there are more farmers looking for land than land available you may be able to get away with a very restrictive lease. If there is more land than farmers you may still be looking for someone the next year. I farm in two adjoining counties. The one where I own the most land there are more people looking than land. I can, within reason, set my own prices if I need a custom operator or want to rent something out. For example, hay there is a 50/50 split. In the other county, 7 miles away, its exactly the opposite. Way more land than farmers. I do some custom work there. If you have the equipment you can pretty much set your own prices.

"Highest bidder wins"
Be careful of this. You may want to state that you have the right to regect any or all bids.
The highest bidder may be the biggest azz in the community or maybe you only get three bids and they all low balled you.

If you ain't gonna take the high bid or take the bid from a jerk, pick who you want to rent it too and yall work something out. No reason to muddy the waters, its a personal call or just buisness. No need to make it something it ain't.

Dave

Thats fine but rent in our area can range from 45 to 110 per acre. Thats 65 per acre difference and on 500 acres is 32,500 at risk to leave on the table over a cup of coffee with a neighbor. Taking bids may be a prudent way to go to ensure a fair market value, but the top bidder may make your life miserable if for instance you depend on your rent for your retirement or to pay your bills and the top bidder has a history in the community of not paying on time or skimping on fertilizer essentially "mining" the fertility of your soil you've spent a lifetime building. Some of these high bid renters also travel long distances and truck in their seed fertilizer and fuel from who knows where while the local retailers and coops lose potential business which is bad for the whole community. These are just a few of many examples of what can go wrong with a high bidder and all I'm saying is to be smart and leave yourself an out because taking a little less or maybe a lot less money from the second highest bidder may be better for everyone.