The official agreement among landlord and tenant by the use of which the tenant can occupy his premises is known as a rental agreement or lease. This rental agreement can be spoken out or put on paper. However, a written rental agreement has lesser chances of misinterpretation later on. A written rental agreement is less confusing and easy to put into practice on either side, by the landlord as well as the tenant. As a rule, a rental agreement of over 1 year has to be in the written format. The rental agreement demands that the tenant has to pay rent to the landlord, which is a preset sum of money mutually decided upon by both parties.

The tenant may also turn over the right to occupy the property to another tenant who is called a subtenant. If this is so, the rental agreement will be called a sublease.

At the end of the rental agreement tenure, the tenant has to give up the property to the landlord. During the period of rental agreement, however, he has to keep paying his dues to the landlord in the form of rent.

In California and some other states, the rental agreement can be downloaded from any agent or attorney. Any word processing software like MS Word can be used to revise and enter information in the downloaded rental agreement. It makes more sense for you to download the entire set of rental agreement, eviction notice form, extension agreement and other necessary documents at the same time. It must be noted that the rental agreement must be recent and must meet the terms of the legal act.