D about to sign a one year lease for June '17-June "18 with 3 other students. Landlord is asking for one check per month. So, one student collects from housemates and submits one check to landlord. I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to be the parent writing out the check. The downside is obvious (possibly waiting for housemates to pay D), but are their benefits?
The benefit is that you know the rent will be paid on time.
The downside is that you may have a collection issue with your housemates. A lot of it depends on if you feel your housemates are financially responsible.
I took on this responsibility in college and it worked out fine. All of the housemates agreed that I would be given checks about 10 days before the rent was due so there would be no last minute collection problems. You also need to get money in advance when there are long holidays (ex. over the semester break).
A possible downside for the student paying the rent is that this student would have to maintain a high enough balance in her checking account so that she could pay the full rent on time even if her housemates’ checks have not cleared yet.
That problem could be remedied by requiring the checks at least a week ahead of time or using other means (cash; electronic transfers like Venmo) to exchange money.
If the housemates are responsible and trustworthy, this isn’t really a problem.
Could the students not set up a joint checking account, all deposit their money in there, and then write the check from that account?
My daughter pays the parent of a roommate, and the mother pays all the bills - rent, electric cable. There are only three of them, the mother lives about an hour away and goes up there quite often. It’s worked so far, and this mother did it last year too (my daughter didn’t live there). Her daughter is graduating this year, and I don’t really want to do it next year. My daughter writes the checks herself, as she has the money in her account for the semester. I’m not really involved.
My kid pays roommate via venmo. Roommate then pays landlord on behalf of the 3 roommates. There haven’t been any issues.
I know this won’t help you now, but we had the lease written up so that four checks would be submitted and if one person did not pay, the issue was between that person and the landlord. When I was in college we all gave our check to a fourth roommate who insisted on paying each month. This guy ( yes kind of like a Threes Company situation) took the money and never paid the rent. He had all kinds of financial problems going on…we found out after two months were missed that he did not pay.
I would make sure that whoever pays, this person has everybody’s check at least 10 days in advance.
Are all 3 house mates signing the lease and do each have their own guarantor or is the parent writing the check the only guarantor? This can all be done electronically by apps like venmo (there are others), including getting the $ to the landlord if that helps…
Our D collected rent payments from 3 roomies and paid landlord directly. We transferred her share into her account each month for her to manage. Landlord would only accepted one check. I was worried about roomies not paying their share on time. It ended up not being a problem.
the people in post 6 were lucky.
As a landlord, I will not accept multiple checks from adults in a household and then only hold 1 responsible if that one’s check bounces.
My leases always say that every adult is jointly and separately liable. Having some degree of leverage has helped me to get paid in full, on time.
I would not put up with 2 of 3 roommates(for example) telling me one had skipped out, and too bad for me.
From a tenant’s perspective, or a tenant’s parent perspective, I would not want to be the one responsible to collect the money then have me write a check because of the obvious risk. And let’s face it, fewer and fewer young people use checks. However, besides Venmo, the collector could require cash or money order in hand, but there again the collector has to enforce the penalty for late payment or no payment with the tenant yet still make the proper payment to the LL.
Both of my kids lived off campus after sophomore year with roommates. I always made sure they had their own lease with the landlord. If a roommate didn’t pay it was between the roommate and the landlord. As a matter of fact, one of D2’s roommates decided to take a semester off at the last minute. The roommate dealt with the landlord, other roommates didn’t have to get involved.
I deposit checks online. The fund is available to me right away. I would set up an online payment via Paypal or Venmo instead of getting checks from roommates if you should decide to right the check. Not sure if I would be willing to be guarantor for other roommates.
I think it depends on the rental agreement specifics. It would be nice that a roommate is not responsible for the payments of other roommates. But the landlord will still harass everyone if someone does not pay (or damage cost).
If you have a separate agreement then the landlord wouldn’t be able to harass other roommates. My kids’ school was landlord’s market due to shortage of supply. I was able to get individual agreement by offering to be the guarantor for my kid’s rent.
When D2’s roommate decided to take a leave of absence abruptly, the landlord didn’t even contact D2.
In grad school, I got screwed for last 2 months, as I was the one who gave the rent, electric bill, etc. I had not volunteered for this position, but our landlord, a professor on leave, used my name for all. It is a terrible position to be the one responsible for seeing that bills are paid.
But oldfort, the landlord could then place a roommate in the apartment without the consent of the people living there. If they each have a lease for 1/4 of the rent, then the landlord can re-rent that room. The college could do it too with a dorm suite.
My daughter’s college has some off campus apartments they lease that way. Each student is only responsible for one room, and most pick their roommates. If someone leaves, the school will fill that spot. It’s not a dorm, it’s an apartment, just happens to be owned by the school.
I added a clause in the lease that the roommates had the option of finding a roommate first, and if they should forfeit the option then it was up to the landlord to find a replacement, but the person would have to be a student at the college and of same sex (female in this case).
In D2’s roommate situation, because the roommate had her own lease with the landlord, she dealt with it instead of leaving to D2 and other roommates to deal with it. I think she just ended up paying for a whole semester of rent instead of looking for a replacement. She could have easily found someone to take over her lease, but she just didn’t bother. The landlord didn’t care because he was getting paid. D2 and other roommates were happy with less people in the apartment.
I had a terrible experience. Of four room mates two were a couple. One of them was responsible for collecting all the money for rent and utilities. She didn’t pay any of the bills for a few months. I came home to her moving out. She confessed to her father she spent all the money so he came and paid the land lord but packed her up to move home. Her boyfriend moved out the same day so me and the other guy were suddenly out two room mates.
I dont remember who collected, but it probably was DS and it worked out fine.
D rented a room in a house and just sent her check for her portion directly to LL when she had room mate and LL that accepted venmo, they used that. I never knew specifics. She will have a room in a house starting up again and hasn’t told me specifics again–likely venmo again.
I’ve done it both ways but never for the “first” apartment…I always paid the rent directly to the landlord after each boys sophomore/first apartment experience I gave them the money and let them figure out how to pay the landlord.
With one son i did have a problem in that one of the roommates dropped out and skipped out on the last 2 months rent. Basically wrote a letter to the landlord which was a huge management company, included a copy of the payment ledger which was online and showed that all the payments had been made by my kid for his portion of the entire year’s lease and told the landlord to take my son to court if they wanted him to pay for the other kid through joint tenancy. My son got a move-out letter in the middle of the summer shorting him one month’s occupancy which he had paid for when my son wasn’t even living in the apartment (but paying his portion on line) so I also sent the management company an invoice for his lost wages, mileage, and one months storage of his belonging. He also got his moped stolen at that complex and their 3rd floor deck railing was broken and never fixed the entire time they were there…they told the guys “not to use the deck”…yeah right…I also reminded the management company about that. I never heard back from them of course and they never paid the invoice I sent and there was never a ‘black mark’ on this particular kid’s credit records or reference checks after that so neither he nor I care, but I’m not a fan of huge management companies that own hundreds and hundreds of units in college towns. We own rental properties to I watch like a hawk.
This year I am transferring the money to my son and he and his roommates are consolidating using Venmo and one of them makes the payment. It’s working fine.