Automatic Rent Increase Clauses Updated to Work Without Self-Extending Lease; Please Discontinue Use of the Self-Extending Lease
. Posted in News - 0 Comments
Our members-only “optional clauses” has been updated so landlords can add automatic rent increases into their rental agreements without needing a self-extending lease.
Our optional clauses now include automatic rent increases without using a self-extending rental agreement. (Image: License cc BY-SA 4.0 MassLandlords, Inc.)
Important: We no longer recommend you use self-extending (automatically renewing) rental agreements, specifically ones that renew for six or 12 months at time. This is in part because a law regulating junk fees in Massachusetts took effect Sept. 1, 2025. It calls for triple damages if a contract auto-renews without proper notice to the consumer (in this case, your renter). You may forget to give the notice.
Additionally, a landlord with a self-extending lease who forgets to properly terminate the agreement can run into trouble if they need to regain possession of the unit.
Instead, we suggest you use a fixed-term lease, which can always be extended by new agreement for another year. Under Massachusetts law, if a renter continues living in an apartment and you continue to collect rent past the end of a fixed-term lease, the tenancy essentially continues under the same terms.
In other words, a fixed-term lease basically becomes an automatically renewing month-to-month agreement until a new rental contract is signed (with proper notice) or the tenancy ends.
The new verbiage in our optional clauses for tenancy agreements lets you set rent increases that automatically happen after the lease would typically end. This works whether you start a new rental agreement or allow the fixed-term lease to turn into a month-to-month tenancy.
The updated optional clauses is already published and available to our members. For all rental forms, including fixed-term leases, visit our forms page.
