<p>DS will be moving into his first off-campus apartment with a couple of friends this August. They have figured out how to split the rent (one will pay more for the larger bedroom), and will need to pay utilities, water & garbage, and internet/cable (3 separate bills). </p>
<p>The property management company requires that the total rent be debited from one account each month. The office manager suggested that the boys open a new bank account together, rather than have one person assume all of the responsibility with an existing account. (Two of the boys have accounts at Wells Fargo and one has an account at Chase, so there is that to consider as well.)</p>
<p>When I went to college back in the Dark Ages, my roommates and I each wrote a check for our share of the rent each month and delivered them to the onsite manager. One of us would write a check for utilities (personal computers and the internet hadn’t been invented yet!) which we’d settle with our shared groceries bills once a month. </p>
<p>I know I’m hopelessly old-fashioned, but the system of everyone writing his own checks seemed so much easier.</p>
<p>I’m wondering what systems your young adults have found most successful in paying bills with roommates.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have!</p>
<p>In N’s case, one person is the lead, and the others each write a check for their total part to her. She computes the share each owes for utilities and rent, and shows them the bills in a brief monthly meeting.</p>
<p>Sylvan, that sounds like a simpler solution to me, but so far, none of the boys have offered to be the bill payer! If my son volunteers his account, he doesn’t have much of a cushion in his balance to front a utility bill while waiting to be paid back, for example. Also, I’m wondering how long it would take a roommate’s rent check to clear (in-state) if it is written from a different bank.</p>
<p>Have the kids find a college appt that allows each kid to have his own lease and pay his own bill. My son shares with 4 others and they each write their own check. Their rent share also covers utilities.</p>
<p>Depending on where you live, how in demand tenants are, yes landlords can do this. If they are willing to use Chase, Chase has a way “Person to Person quick pay” or something like that, where you can transfer money electronically very quickly between accounts of even unrelated people. I am pretty certain this works even if accounts from differents states – I think Chase uses the same ABA routing account for all states. So if they opened up a new Chase account, and they all switched to Chase, they could do this</p>
<p>I can understand why landlord wants one account – that way the kids themselves chase up each other for rent.</p>
<p>The landlord doesn’t want people to write teheir own checks because they don’t want to chase down three individuals about late checks – one check holds all of the roommates accountable for knowing that all of the rent is on time. They’ll also almost never split up the responsibility. I did live in one place that allowed us to write separate checks , but when my roommate forgot to pay her rent on time, none of us had any idea that she had until we got a letter stating that we were being fined $100 for our rent being late. (She paid the $100). One check allows all the roommates to know and see that the money was there.</p>
<p>Last year D was the “manager” for bills and was constantly having to chase after her roommate for her share of the rent and utilities. This year, there are four of them in the apartment. One of the girls handles the utilities and D handles the rent. We insist that she have the checks in hand and that they have posted to her account before she writes the rent check. Same situation - still having to chase after two of the roommates for their checks. Your son shouldn’t ever be in the position of having to front utilities or being reimbursed - when the bills come, everyone should be notified of their share and checks should be written to the person making the payment at least a week before the bills are due. </p>
<p>Next year D’s living in a house where she will pay individually! Hooray! I can’t wait!</p>
<p>At my S’s house,he pays the cable/internet bill every month online using a credit card. Then the other three roommates pay a bigger share of the rent than S. </p>
<p>One of the other roommates is responsible for the utility bill. When it comes in, he lets the others know how much they owe and when it’s due. They each write a check and he takes it to the city utility dept (conveniently located a couple of blocks from their house). Quite a few times S has called saying “The utility bill is due today. Can you put $$ in my acct.?” Being able to instantly transfer money from our acct to his acct (Wells Fargo) online has been key! Make the kids know where the utility dept. in their city is in case they too wait until the last minutes some months and have to drive over and walk the bill in to the office. </p>
<p>For rent, they all write a check and one of them drops the checks off at the landlords house.<br>
He’s a Dr. in the Med. sch. at their university. He’s pretty lenient about however they want to handle. If they call and say the rent is going to be late, it’s fine.</p>
<p>So I guess in our case, it’s sort of a group effort. S is in change of internet, another roommate gets the utiltiy bill together and the rent is a joint cooperative effort…whoever has time to do it does it.</p>
<p>this was from one of our posters on the 2014 thread… i sent it to my son as he is in an apt hunt now… great advice… i think the everyone pay in one month in case someone is late is a great idea</p>
<p>Having been through the apartment renting deal with DS, a few tips from the rear view mirror. </p>
<p>1) Take pictures of everything as you move in - that way there are fewer disputes with the landlord over the condition of the apartment. </p>
<p>2) Set up one checking account to pay rent, utilities etc - and have everyone on the lease pre-pay one extra month. That way when someone is late, the money is still there to pay on time and no one gets their credit report dinged for late payment.</p>
<p>3) Also agree in advance on how the place is going to get cleaned at the end. DS has gotten stuck cleaning the whole place twice now due to students who are willing to walk away from their cleaning deposit. His current arrangement include $200 from each of the three guys in the common checking account to pay for a housecleaning service to come at the end of the lease. You want that $200 back? Better clean up well before leaving.</p>
<p>4) Craigslist seems to be the main source of rentals - at least in DS city. Far more listings there than anywhere else.</p>
<p>5) Have a roommate agreement just like in the dorms - it will come in handy when someone decides they don’t clean</p>
<p>If none of the students has a desire to be the rent payer, this might be a good time for the parents to get involved.</p>
<p>One set of parents might want to have their child be the rent payer and might want the parent’s name to be on the account as well. </p>
<p>One of my kids lived in an off-campus apartment where the utilities (not the rent) had to be handled by one tenant, with the parent as a co-signer. One kid’s parents wanted this role. The other two families agreed. End of problem.</p>
<p>It sounds like the idea of opening an account together is not a bad idea only because it will mean that all three are legally responsible instead of just one. It can be a problem when just one of the kids has an account and then has to collect for everyone to put the money together and then pay. Like it was mentioned, if the student typically keeps a pretty low balance it will lead to issues such as bounced checks and such. A bounced check charge can really blow a tight it for a kid with a super tight budget.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is really no way to be sure that all of the roommates will stay in the apartment together and therefore the shared bank account could be a bad idea if it is something that will not be kept up with. For instance if one of the kids leave the situation early and they never take their name off of the account. Living together is not easy and some people end up losing friendships over it.</p>
<p>I would find out if there is another option about paying the rent. Maybe they will allow PayPal. That would alleviate some of the stress of worrying over a bank account that everyone has access to. It is odd though that they require the rent to be paid automatically out of the bank account. That is new.</p>
<p>Marian, you were fortunate that one kids parents were willing to do this. I dont think that is too common that one parent will WANT that. Who wants to be responsible for that?</p>
<p>My D pays her rent check a good 7-10 days before it is due. As it is a local credit union, it transfers well before rent is due.
The other young women have lived together for at least a year before D moved in- but I expect they do something similar.</p>
<p>When students rent an apartment together, the biggest risk is one should decide to move out for whatever reason. You need to consider what to do if that should happen.</p>
<p>D1 was renting an apartment with her best friend, lovely girl, family financially sound, but the parents were very dizzy when it came to money. There were few times when D1 put out money first (trips) and it would take the friend months to pay her back. </p>
<p>I asked the landlord if they could have separate lease. The landlord agreed as long as I guranteed D1’s rent. The lease also stipulated that if one roommate should move out then it wouldn’t be the other roommate’s liability.</p>
<p>I am not sure how the utilities were paid, but the cost was so small that I didn’t really worry about it.</p>
<p>Don’t forget your kids canyouse paypal to transfer personal funds toe ach other, if need be.</p>
<p>My s’s have always been the type to offer to pay and collect from the others (rent, trips, you name it) and they are always getting sob stories. But it usually works out in the end.</p>
<p>In cities where housing is tight (as in ours) and there are lots of students, I think the landlords are unlikely to be interested in having multiple leases with each tenant. If so, I think the solution proposed of having everyone be one month ahead will solve most problems. Non-paying roommates are always a potential problem, even with a one month cushion.</p>
<p>Ithaca housing is very tight due to the fact that most students lived off campus after the first year. We were also told that landlords didn’t negotiate, but we were able to get few things modified on the contract. D1’s school also had an off campus housing office. We called the office to find out reputation of various landlords. It is a good resource to check what is “norm” when it comes to rental lease.</p>
<p>Years ago we Each wrote a check to the utilities…
meaning four checks went with the bill. Each check had the acct # on it.
Cable, Tel. (yes we had a land line) etc</p>
<p>Now I suppose internet packages are the issue. And any on-demand movie usage.</p>
<p>We did our grocery shopping together as a trip and paid for our brkfst/lunch items separately. Dinners were cooked for the group. M-Th each took a night to cook/cleanup. So that chicken etc was split 4 ways. </p>
<p>This is good info - we aren’t there just yet-- though helpful.
Here on the homefront so much is paid electronically that we hardly write checks for anything. And neither of my students even have checks printed for their bank accts.
Bill Pay systems allow for reminders and auto write sets ups so perhaps thats the way to go for the roommates. Use a bill pay to monthly write the check to the joint account, and then set up that account on an auto write to cut a check each month to the landlord.</p>
<p>Most landlords are not interested in separate leases or separate checks. If you were a landlord, would you be?</p>
<p>In both my older kids’ cases, there was 1 lease with all 4 signatures. They arranged it so three people had to hand over the rent 1 week before it was due, to 1 LEAD person, so that the lead person had time to deposit and clear before writing the 1 big check. It always worked.</p>
<p>Rent portions were divided according to the size of rooms, closets etc.</p>
<p>I would NEVER recommend 3 random people opening a joint bank account. Just not a good idea.</p>
<p>As far as utilities, once again, have 1 lead person collect in advance from the others, and since the amount for heat and a/c varies, just collect a fixed sum, and adjust later. It’s a great learning opportunity for all of them.</p>