E-signatures for landlords: leases and renewals

What landlords and property managers send

A rental runs on a few documents, each worth having signed by every person it binds:

• The lease or tenancy agreement, and each renewal or extension.
• Addenda: pets, parking, storage, house rules.
• Move-in and move-out condition reports, with the photos inside the PDF.
• Guarantor agreements, when someone guarantees the rent.

Each one is a PDF of up to 8 MB, so you can keep using your own lease, saved as a PDF. A document can have up to 20 signers: every adult tenant, a guarantor and you. You place the fields: a signature for each signer, initials on each page, a date signed, a full name, and text fields with a label such as "Parking space" or "Keys received".

Settle deposit questions at move-in

At move-out, a tenant says the scratched floor was already like that. Without a move-in record, both of you argue from memory.

Make the condition report a signed document. Walk through the home with the tenant, take photos, put the checklist and the photos in one PDF and send it to the tenant for signature, with yourself as a signer too. Each signer's passkey, a cryptographic key only they control, unlocked with Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello or the device PIN, signs a statement that names the report's fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash, a short code calculated from the file's contents). The photos are part of the file, so a copy with any photo changed has a different fingerprint and fails verification. The completed report is anchored on Horizen, a public blockchain, whose block time shows when. At move-out, do the same with a second report.

If the deposit is disputed, the tenant, a mediator or a court can check both reports for free, with no account, at attest.datahubz.com/verify, or with the open-source verifier attached inside each PDF, which runs in any browser even if Attest is gone. Change one byte of a report, of anyone's entries or of the signed pages, and verification fails.

Several tenants, a guarantor and you, in order

Under Signing order, choose In order and list the tenants first, then the guarantor. Check Add me as a signer (sign in-app, no email) and choose Last, so you sign once everyone else has. Only the signer whose turn it is gets the email, and the next one is emailed when the previous one signs. You aren't emailed at your turn: the lease moves to Action needed in your dashboard, with a Sign button on its row.

• Expires (optional): when you are holding a unit for an applicant, set a date. If the lease isn't signed by then, it closes, no one can sign it, and every party is emailed.
• Reminders: every 3 days by default, or every day, every 2 days or every week, at most 5 times per signer.
• Decline: any signer can decline, which closes the lease for every party and emails you.

Renewals without chasing

Send each renewal as its own document, and write the original lease's verification code (ATT-XXXX-XXXX, printed on its signed copy) into it. A tenant who signed with Attest before opens the renewal at once, with no release step. Your dashboard's Waiting on others tab shows the renewals still waiting on tenants, Action needed shows those waiting on you, and Remind emails the link again to whoever's turn it is.

Lease formalities by country

Most leases can be signed electronically. Some places set extra formalities for longer leases or for particular notices. Attest signatures are electronic signatures, not qualified electronic signatures, so where a rule below applies, use the method it requires.

Where	The rule (general information)
United States	Leases are not on ESIGN's list of exclusions. Notices of default, eviction or the right to cure under a rental agreement for an individual's primary residence are outside ESIGN's general rule (15 U.S.C. 7003(b)(2)(B)), and states can add exclusions when they enact UETA, within the limits ESIGN sets
England and Wales	A lease must be made by deed to create a legal lease, unless it takes effect at once, for up to 3 years, at the best rent reasonably obtainable without a premium (Law of Property Act 1925, sections 52 and 54(2)). A deed signed by an individual needs a witness, and the Law Commission's view is that the witness must be physically present
Germany	A residential lease for more than one year that isn't in written form (electronically, a qualified electronic signature) is treated as made for an indefinite period (BGB sections 550, 126 and 126a). Commercial leases need only text form for that rule (section 578)
Spain	Leases of six years or more that are to affect third parties must be in a public document (Código Civil article 1280.2); once the parties agree, either can compel the other to complete that form (article 1279)
Italy	Leases of real estate for more than nine years must be in writing, which electronically means a qualified or digital signature, unless the signature is authenticated (Codice civile article 1350; CAD article 21(2-bis))
South Africa	The ECT Act gives no validity to an agreement for the long-term lease of immovable property for more than 20 years (Schedule 2)

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the rules where the property is, and see electronic signatures in the United States for the US rules in full.

Private for you and your tenants

A lease names the people who live in a home and what they pay. Attest encrypts every document in your browser before upload, and only its parties can open it, in their own browsers. Attest stores it only as ciphertext it can't read. We compared 21 e-signature services in October 2026, Attest and 20 others, and Attest was the only one that end-to-end encrypts every document, for every signer, by default.

Attest does see the information around a document: its title, file name, size and type, your note, the email addresses of your account and of the signers, the signers' names, where fields are placed and when each step happened. By default, an agreement's certificate is public and shows anyone with its link details such as the title and each tenant's name and signing time, never the lease itself. For leases, choose Private when you send, and only the parties see it.

If you sign the lease too, your tenants gain something useful: a tenant who has to show a bank or a new employer that they hold a lease can share a zero-knowledge proof that they and you signed an agreement, and the date it was completed. The recipient sees both email addresses, the completion date, and that the proof is valid and where its record is anchored, never the lease, its title or the rent. See proving an agreement to a bank, landlord, investor or new employer.

What it costs

Your portfolio	Plan
A few units, a handful of documents a year	Your first 2 documents are free, in total; then the Signing plan, $5 a month for 20 documents, monthly, cancel any time
Up to 20 documents a month	Signing plan, $5 a month
A property manager sending more	Pro, $49 a month: documents count as records, with 10,000 records a month and no separate document limit

Tenants and guarantors never pay. For one sender at up to 20 documents a month, as published on October 11, 2026: DocuSign Personal is $15 a month for 5 envelopes ($11 a month on an annual commitment), Dropbox Sign Essentials is $20 a month for 1 user ($15 a month billed yearly), and Adobe Acrobat Standard is $24.99 a month ($14.99 a month on an annual plan).

Send a lease, step by step

1. Go to attest.datahubz.com/sign, click Start free, sign in with your email and set up your signing key once, with a passkey and a recovery phrase, on the Security page.
2. Click New agreement, give it a plain Title such as "Lease, unit 4", and attach the lease PDF.
3. Under Signers, add each tenant's email address, then the guarantor's. Check Add me as a signer (sign in-app, no email), pick In order under Signing order, and choose Last.
4. Under Verification, choose Private, and set Expires (optional) if you are holding the unit.
5. Click Next: place the fields, place each signer's fields, and click Create and send.
6. When a tenant new to Attest has set up their key, click Unlock it for … in Attest's email (or open the agreement in Attest), confirm, and approve with your passkey: your browser releases the encrypted lease to them, never Attest.
7. When it's your turn, click Sign on the lease's row. When everyone has signed, every party downloads the same sealed copy.