If limited housing options force you to rent, if renting is your lifestyle of choice, if you live in a tight rental market, subscribe to NoloBriefs before the month is out.

NoloBriefs is an e-mail newsletter and all during August it comes with a free downloadable renters' kit with 10 forms called "Legal Forms for Personal Use: Renting Residential Real Estate." It normally sells for $16.50.

That's because on Nolo.com's (formerly Nolo Press) Web site, August is Renters' Month. The Berkeley-based legal self-help publisher is focusing on your needs with freebies you can use.

Among the forms:

• Apartment-Finding Service Checklist
• Rental Application
• Landlord-Tenant Checklist
• Fixed-Term Residential Lease
• Notice of Needed Repairs
• Month-to-Month Residential Rental Agreement

Every month, Nolo's e-mail newsletter, aptly called NoloBriefs, provides updates on legal issues, articles, books, software and good-natured lawyer jokes, along with the free monthly forms and kits.

When you sign up, the July issue will suddenly appear as a bonus in your mailbox.

It comes with free downloadable forms to assist you with borrowing or lending money. And with the nation's hot housing market, you might just need that promissory note to secure a loan for your first-last-security deposit rental move-in costs.

Subscribe or not, anyone can visit the Nolo.com site and peruse Chapter 6 "Roommates" and Chapter 11 "Landlord Retaliation" from the publisher's "Renters' Rights" tome by attorney Janet Portman and Marcia Stewart.

"If you're like most tenants, you've got one roommate or more. And chances are that the names on your mailbox will change at least once before you, too, move on. Unfortunately, many landlords aren't as flexible as you would like when it comes to adding new roommates or letting others out of a lease," the introduction to Chapter 6 explains.

It goes on to discuss your legal obligations and responsibilities regarding roommates, what to do if your roommate bails, moving in a roommate and what to do if your landlord objects, what to do if you and your roommate feud, and whether or not you can rent space to a roomer.

Chapter 11 speaks to tenants who have asserted their rights only to have to deal with an irate landlord's petty harassment, rent hike or an all-out termination and eviction.

Renter's Month or not, Nolo's Landlord Tenant area is chock full of help with the legal ramifications of being either a tenant or a landlord with lots of excerpts from it's best-selling collection of books for both.

Leases and rental agreements, tenant selection and housing discrimination, rent and security deposits, repairs and privacy issues, liability and eviction issues are all excerpted in bulleted, frequently-asked-questions, and capsulated formats.

For more renting issues, check out the Realty Times Apartment News section.

Published: August 5, 1999

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