Room Rental Agreement
Are you looking for a step-by-step guide to complete a lease agreement with your roommates? In this article, you can find all the instructions you might need to prepare it and also some main information about this paper.
What Is A Room Rental Agreement?
It’s a document used by two or multiple co-tenants who are planning to share common areas in the property. It also can be interchanged with the term Sublease Agreement.
One of these tenants must be a principal one who is subleasing their property or room to the secondary tenants. The room rental agreement is a form where both parties reinforce their expectations, rights, and responsibilities to each other during cohabitation.
The written agreement is essential if a tenant wants to protect their rights and guarantee the tenant financial responsibilities. In addition to duties and responsibilities, the document includes such elements as the division of utilities, parking, liability for damages, insurance of a renter, prohibition or restrictions on the use of alcohol or cigarettes, as well as other prohibitions (e.g., pets, children, guests, etc.).
When To Use A Room Rental Agreement
The agreement is used when you, as the owner or principal tenant, want to rent out part of your property to another person. In order to avoid potential conflicts and protect themselves by imposing certain obligations on the co-tenants and stipulating the conditions of co-living, the parties can conclude the room rental agreement.
Note that the document does not extend its legal force in all situations. So, you can't legally oblige your cotenant to perform household duties by threatening them by the court. However, the law can force the roommates to fulfill the financial obligations stipulated in the agreement.
The most common situations for creating the agreement:
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You are afraid that your roommate will constantly invite guests and arrange noisy parties that will disturb you.
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Your tenant has a partner who spends a lot of time in your apartment. Since this may interfere with your personal life or lead to an increase in water or energy bills, you are entitled to specify this situation in your agreement.
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You want to divide the household responsibilities and distribute who will pay for what to avoid a situation where one person does everything and pays for all bills, and the other one does nothing.
There are also other situations when you want to make an agreement based on your needs and requirements. In the next section, I’ll tell you what you should include in your document to make it legal.
What Should Be Included In A Room Rental Agreement
There is no strictly specified clear number of terms that need to be included in the room rental agreement. In fact, it depends on your specific situation. However, there is a certain minimum of things that your document must contain in order to be considered a lease document:
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Names of all the tenants and the property address
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Period of tenancy with dates
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Rules and permissions of the cotenants
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Security&Rent deposits
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Supplies and furniture that are included in the rental and not
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Pets policy (whether they are allowed or not)
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Tenants responsibilities for damaged properties
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Signatures of all the cotenants
How A Room Rental Agreement Works
If you still want to make an agreement with your roommate/s, continue reading this article. In this section, I will tell you in detail how to make a room rental agreement correctly.
- Add basic info about the document.
Write the name of the state, date of the agreement conclusion, the fill address of the property, including city, street, and zip code, and specify the term of the lease at the beginning of the paper.
- List the names of each tenant and their financial obligations
In addition to the full names of all tenants and their number, you need to specify the monthly amount that they must pay for rent, the amount of the security deposit. You can also write which room each person occupies. The particular number of tenants will ensure that your roommates will not sublease your property to third parties.
- Identify if utilities are included in the rent payment
Here you can specify whether the utilities are included in the rental price or not. The list of utilities includes gas, electricity, cable, heat, water, internet, and others. You also should divide the payment or these utilities between the co-tenants and specify which party’s payment responsibilities in the written form.
If you have a shared parking zone, please specify the car brand and parking spot for each of the roommates.
- Enter legal considerations
Write whether the roommates pay rent insurance in case of damage to the property. Also, indicate how many months in advance the tenant must warn that he intends to terminate the agreement.
- Permissions and prohibitions
Describe whether the co-tenants have the right to have pets, invite guests, make noises and organize parties, buy cigarettes and drink alcohol, and so on. Specify each of the points. For example, if the roommate has pets, write their number, types, and other relevant information.
If there are such activities your tenant may do that can distract you from your regular routine, you probably should include them in the paper. If the restrictions apply only to certain areas of the property or at certain hours (e.g., prohibition of noises from 11 pm to 9 am), you need to specify these conditions.
At the end of the document, everyone must write their name, sign, and date of the agreement.
The agreement helps to protect you and gives you the right to evict the tenants or force them to fulfill their obligations if they refuse. So, you should think about designing it as the process described above is not very complicated and won’t take a lot of your time.
