Pretty much this. A 21-22 year old grad student or college graduate should not need a co-signer for a simple apartment lease, that a landlord is demanding a co-signer for a 22 year old adult is a bit of a red flag to me.
An owner does not “sublet” an apartment. He lets it. A tenant who has a lease sublets to another tenant. You need more information.
As co-signer, you would be responsible for whatever your daughter is responsible for. If each tenant signs his/her own lease specifying the total amount that individual tenant is responsible for each month, and for how long, then the co-signer would be obligated only for that amount.
But if there is ONE lease and the roomies all sign it, then EACH tenant (AND therefore each co-signer) is on the hook for the entire rent stated in the lease for the duration. If A, B & C all sign a lease that says $1,000 in rent will be paid each month, they are each one guarantying that $1,000 will be paid each month - not that A & B will pay $300, and C will pay $400 each month. Each one is responsible for the whole rent. However they divide it amongst themselves does not concern the landlord. And each co-signer is making that same promise. Therefore, if you co-sign for A, and neither B or C pays the rent - A (and therefore, you) is on the hook for the whole rent.
If A, B & C don’t pay, the landlord may look to the co-signers to pay the rent. The co-signers then get to determine between themselves who pays/gets repaid, and that may require litigation to get some co-signers to pay up. That’s why a landlord would want as many co-signers as he could get! He could get the whole rent from any of the tenants and any of the co-signers.
Hence my advice: READ the lease BEFORE signing it. The lease will tell you what you/your daughter are responsible for. If you can’t tell by reading it, take it to a lawyer for deciphering. Unless you are prepared to pay the whole rent for the duration of the lease, don’t do it.
[Again, IAAL but I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice, just common sense. I am not licensed to practice in your state or Massachusetts, and besides, you should take any and all advice gleaned from an anonymous message board with a grain of salt.]
I co-signed my daughter’s lease. There were 3 room-mates involved.
Before signing, I went out for dinner with the four of them (even picked up the tab). They all seemed like great, hardworking kids. My daughter has great taste in friends. I signed willingly, yet kind of held my breath.
The year just recently came to an end. They all signed a new lease, and a co-signer was not needed. Maybe I was just lucky.
Already mentioned I think but deserves to be repeated (assuming it is correct) … the landlord can and will come after whoever is on the lease. Whoever is more likely to be able to pay is going to be the target. There is no ordering involved.
The only realistic way to limit your liability here is to co-sign for a place where only your kid lives.
My parents did for me because the city I was living in wouldn’t allow someone under 21 to sign a lease without a co-signer, but it was strictly in an apartment where I was the only tenant.
If the lease is only for one year then that’s the extent of your liability, isn’t it? The problem is what might occur during that year. You might argue for a six month lease, but the problem is still that the roommates might trash the place and leave you on the hook for damages.
You can TRY this, but why on earth would a landlord agree to that? If you break the lease you’re still liable for the full length of the lease, and once you’re out the landlord is free to rent the place out again, even if the term of the lease isn’t up yet because you’ve already broken the contract. There is zero reason for a landlord to agree to that.
Yeah, I’m not grokking why a 20-something legal adult/college graduate needs a cosigner. I lived off campus in college for the last two years and managed two leases in my own name all by myself. Several more followed post-graduation. I don’t understand. I’m also having trouble with the idea of calling a 20-something legal adult a “child.” She’s not a child. She’s* your* adult child; but she’s not a child (per thread title).
This. Having roommates on your co-signed lease is also a huge red flag for me too. Maybe I’ve just watched too much Judge Judy (or maybe you haven’t watched enough, prr).
Read into Boston landlord / tenant ordinances and laws. That will answer most of your questions. For example you question putting in some requirement that the land lord has to try and find new tenants if the lease needs to be broken–in many, many jurisdictions I am familiar with the land lord is legally obligated to try and find replacement tenants if you need to break the lease, and they can only charge you for the rent up until they find the new tenants. They are usually allowed to deduct money from the security deposit for any “reasonable expenses” incurred in finding new tenants (newspaper advertisements etc.)
As for limiting your liability to a single year…you will be liable for the duration of the lease that you sign, once that lease is up many land lords will probably not require you to co-sign again if all the rent payments were coming in during a timely fashion up to that point.
In tight real estate markets, landlords call the shots. There’s no mention of professional, full time work in the OP. Presumably the OP’s daughter is unemployed until she finds work in Boston (which I am sure she will search for diligently, etc., but OTOH we got this REcession on). If the landlords don’t want to rent to questionably employed people without further financial guaratees, they don’t, because they don’t have to.
Now I’ve never lived in Boston so I really don’t know. But the scenario described in the OP is not at all uncommon in popular urban centers and college towns (and Boston is both). It can be nigh impossible to rent an apartment without a 1 year employment history in some cities. When we moved to NYC we had to show bank statements sufficient to cover the first 6 months of rent, proof that I was a fulltime student, there was a credit check and a criminal check (which we had to pay for), we had to put down a large deposit required to be drawn on a bank located within New York City… And this was for a rent-regulated apartment, meaning, the landlord is actually far more limited in what he can demand than your average schmoe.
If your daughter is still, looking, OP, see if she can find a place where the landlord rents rooms rather than the apartment. That way, even if you still need to cosign, what the other roommates do or don’t pay has no bearing on your daughter’s responsibilities. Plenty of landlords do that, especially around the suburban-ish campuses like Tufts-Medford.
(I live near Tufts, in fact, so if your daughter ends up here and wants someone to walk her around, feel free to let me know! I’m at miss.arabella.flynn at GMail. Powder House Square is the most obnoxious intersection I have ever seen in my life, especially for pedestrians.)
I don’t have any particular advice for the OP, but for the people who say he shouldn’t co-sign the lease, I should point out that he probably has no choice if he wants his daughter to be able to get an apartment. My parents co-signed my first couple of apartment leases (and never had to pay a cent) both when I had a steady full-time job and when I didn’t because landlords do not trust recent college graduates to be able to pay their rent. With good reason, arguably, since recent college grads are usually not making a ton of money and tend not to have large savings to draw from if they lose a job or their income becomes insufficient. I have no doubt there are risks for parents here, but this seems to be the way of doing business with regard to leasing an apartment for young people - at least when there are plenty of them around and landlords can pick and choose.
I totally agree about the roommate thing.
Anyway, I would try to get a provision put into the guarantee that your total liability is limited to three thousand dollars no matter what.
I will absolutely guarantee that there are apartments in Boston that won’t require a parent to co-sign. I was in the same position as the OP’s daughter four years ago, and I never encountered any landlord that wanted a co-signer. All I had was a job offer and enough cash to cover first/last/deposit.
I can’t speak to Boston specifically because I haven’t lived there. But for every apartment I’ve rented, the first month’s rent and security were required upfront whether the leases were parentally co-signed or not.
The landlord may, but is not required to, collect first month, last month and a security deposit which cannot exceed one month’s rent. If the landlord is using a real estate agent for showings, application, etc, the agent may charge up to one month’s rent as a non-refundable fee. There are also allowable charges for lock changes and application fees, but at most you’re on the hook for around 4 months rent upfront. Most places just charge security + either first or last. The agent fee may sound onerous at first but can be well worth the money in a tight rental market.
It’s really going to depend on the landlord, also keeping in mind that landlords can get away with a lot more these days because of everyone who lost their house but still needs a place to live. There are way more renters these days, and landlords can be as picky (and unreasonable) as they want. (Not all of it may be legal, but not many people have the time to pursue it in court, either. Particularly those who have a deadline to vacate their current residence, which is going to be most of them.)
So, ten years ago, in Chicago, I applied for an apartment, the landlord insisted on a co-signer, I refused, and he took an extra month’s rent (two months instead of one) in security deposit instead.
Two months ago, in Chicago, I applied for an apartment, the landlord insisted on a co-signer (both tenants are in our 30s!), we tried to negotiate him out of it, and then tried to negotiate limits and favorable terms for our co-signers, but instead he ignored the fact that we’d already put down a deposit (which was supposed to take the place off the market), continued showing it, accepted another application, and rented it out from under us. Ultimately we found a better apartment for less money, so it worked out, but this illustrates that landlords can and will be assholes about this sort of thing. You can try to negotiate favorable terms, but you may just end up with the landlord blowing you off and renting it to another tenant.
I don’t have much advice other than be prepared for the landlord not to negotiate, at all, and figure out what you’ll want to do in that case. And keep in the back of your mind that you may not be done looking for a place until you’ve actually got a signed lease. I wouldn’t put the ads away just yet.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear: when I said “required,” I meant the landlord required those things of me. From what I’ve seen, yes, the first month’s rent and a security deposit equal to a month’s rent are standard. In my experience the broker/agent is engaged by the renter and not the landlord, but I’m sure there are plenty of places where it works the other way around.
As a further data point, in Chicago the brokers are “free” to renters, it’s the landlords who pay their fee. Of course, renters do end up paying for it in the sense that the landlord will set a higher rent to recoup the broker fee (we saw this with our recent apartment hunt – exact same unit, but through the broker rent was $25 a month higher than direct through the management company). But often it’s worth it, if you get a good agent.