Not sure what to do about this lease issue. (Need answer fast-ish.)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not asking for legal advice. Just guidance.

I’ve been renting my current home for about 3 years now. I’ve been supporting the house by myself since my ex-girlfriend moved out in October, but it’s gotten to be too large a burden for me to carry.

I found a roommate on Craigslist and he seems like a good guy. I call my landlady to inform her and ask her to send me the lease paperwork. The conversation went thusly:

Landlady: No, that’s okay. He can just go under your lease.

Me: My lease? You mean if something goes wrong, I’m responsible?

LL: Pretty much, yeah. That way you have all the power to kick him out if you don’t like him.

Me: So you want me to basically sublet the place, even though I’m still living there?

LL: You could call it that, I guess.

Me: Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather he go under his own lease.

LL: No, that’s okay. You guys will be fine.

So essentially, she’s forcing me to be the property manager as well as a tenant. If he causes damage or bails on the rent, I’m on the hook. Can she legally do this? I want to push back, but am afraid of souring our good landlady-tenant relationship. I just don’t feel comfortable being held responsible for this guy. Additionally, I’m on a month-to-month (having already fulfilled my initial one-year lease), and I’d like to get him on a one-year lease without affecting my own. Would the Maryland Housing Authority be able to help me? Who can I go to?

He’s due to move in on the 27th and I want to give him time to review the paperwork. I also don’t want to scare him off with an immediate landlady-tenant dispute. Please help.

2

Your landlady has a deal with you. She has no incentive to enter into a deal with new guy. She has given you permission to have a roommate. You have a month to month arrangement. You can’t “force” her to do things differently. You asked, and she wasn’t interested. You can stay, or you can go. Those seem to be your options.

3

How can you force him into a one year lease when you yourself only have a month to month lease. Sounds like fraud to me by stipulating something in a lease that you cannot fulfill.

The only way I see around this is to tell your landlady that you want to convert to a year lease and then add a roommate. I believe that she doesn’t see a need to add someone else to a month to month lease and really, why should she?

4

Exactly correct.

Agent Foxtrot, your landlady has no obligation and little incentive to get involved by entering into a lease with this fellow you’re subleasing your space to. Her only incentive is that having the 2nd tenant in there makes it more likely she’ll get paid, but she obviously doesn’t feel that entering into a lease with him is necessary for you to take on the roommate.

For what it’s worth, if I were willing to write up a new lease as you’re asking, I’d only write one that makes you each jointly and severally liable for the entire amount. So if your roommate screwed you by moving out you might have a remedy with him, but you’d still owe me the entire rent under the new lease anyway, as would be if you screwed him over. So you wouldn’t be any better off anyway.

Also you can’t lease a room for a year when you only have a right to it for a month.

5

We require all tenants to be on the lease. However, they all go on the same lease, and are each liable for the entirety of rent, damages, etc.

As a landlord, I would not be willing to do as you asked (e.g., set up a separate lease). That would be a huge headache and asking for problems.

Of course, I wouldn’t let you just move someone in, either, so there’s that. That’s also a huge headache and asking for problems.

We have one house that has had a rotating list of tenants for a number of years. One roommate moves out, another moves in - time for a new lease. Since they are college kids, we also make sure they understand what the terms of their lease mean. We’ve had great success with this.

6

I see what you all are saying, but when I initially moved into the house with another neighbor at the same time, we both had separate leases. After a year, she left and I stayed. Why wouldn’t she be willing to have the same arrangement again?

7

As a landlord, I just wouldn’t be wanting to put in double the effort of getting into a lease agreement with a second person for the same amount of benefit that I have now.

There is no reason or motivation for me to do as you ask, and quite a bit of motivation to NOT do it. I want your money and you to be responsible for the place, I don’t want to add to the confusion by having two people, each who could claim that the other guy is responsible for damage and upkeep. WHo am I going to believe and how will problems get straighted out?

No, its better for the landlord to keep you responsible, and if the other guy screws you, the landlord doesn’t have to deal with it.

By the way, your landlord is doing you a favor by allowing you to sublet. She doesn’t have an obligation to permit it. Asking for her to take on the extra obligation for no benefit is, in my opinion, pushing your luck

8

Just FYI, this is not at all uncommon, to have one person on a lease, and another housemate subletting from them with the tacit approval of the landlord.

The only real reason for you to have them on the lease is if you’re in a one-year commitment, then you have some legal leverage to make them find a replacement if they move out mid-year. But it’s pretty tenuous leverage, anyway, given how hard it would be for you to actually collect anything from them if they just move out. So really, you might be better off without them on a lease, since now you have the power to kick them out at any time.

From the landlord’s point of view, as far as damage goes, the last thing the landlord really wants to do is get in the middle of you two arguing about who broke something, so any kind of lease would make you both responsible for damage anyway. You certainly could get a damage deposit from your housemate (of course it will go over a lot easier with them if it’s half of whatever damage deposit you’ve given the landlord).

9

Well, she may be more amenable if you re-signed for a full year, and that’s likely why she would have been willing to take on the ordeal in the first place.

You were there for a year, so was the other person, so it could be conceivable to set up two separate leases for that period.

Having two leases on a month-to-month basis sounds like way more hassle than it’s worth for her.

I’m pretty much in agreement with everyone else on here. You’re getting a sublet, which is luckier than a lot of other people, especially on a month-to-month.

10

All right, I’ll take the deal. But I’m not sure what paperwork I need the new tenant to sign. I went to LegalZoom and found a “Sublease of Residential Lease (With Landlord Consent)”, but it won’t let me look at the verbiage without actually buying it. Is that the one I want?

11

Usually landlords can provide their sublet agreement paperwork for a small fee. If she’s not wanting to do that… then I’d see what she would provide.

12

Why a fee? It’s not costing her anything to give me one, is it?

13

She paid for it in the first place. If it’s hers she can sell it if she wants. Why should Legal Zoom charge you for a lease? They already have it, it doesn’t cost anything to give it to you. She has no obligations to you except those spelled out in your lease. Renting an apartment is business, not trading favors between friends.

14

Go to Staples, they have blank lease templates where you fill in your own terms. My current landlady picked one up for like $10 when I moved in, we filled it in together with what we agreed on. It covered pretty much everything. It even covered stuff that didn’t apply, so we just crossed it out (I didn’t have pet, for example, but there was a space for a pet deposit). Or maybe you can find a sublease template online, it’s not that big a deal. It’ll just be a way to hammer out the terms, and gives you both something to take to small claims court if shit goes down later.

Just charge him a deposit to move in, if you’re worried about damages. If he doesn’t cause any, he gets all that money back. If he does, you just document the damage, provide him with receipts for the amount of repairs/cleaning needed, and send him the remainder. One month’s rent is generally a good starting place for that.

15

I’ve had roommates in several houses and apartments. I’ve never had multiple leases for one dwelling. In every case I am aware of we were all on the same lease, and each person had to individually qualify. One time my GF was on the lease but I wasn’t because I didn’t make enough money to qualify on my own (though in reality I could pay the lease by myself since I’m not a spendthrift).

16

If you were on separate leases why did you have to pay the full combined rent when the other person left?

17

Guidance is advice. Legal advice goes in IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

18

I believe what you want is a roommate agreement, or possibly a sublet agreement, not a lease. It’s not your property so I really don’t see how you can lease it to him, on top of that many of the services that a landlord provides are not really your responsibility, such as repair and upkeep of appliances, plumbing, pest control, etc.

If you google “roommate agreement” there’s a bunch of .pdf’s.

19

It sounds to me as if you want to get a roommate, but you want the landlord to assume the responsibility for collecting his share of the rent. Why would the landlord do this, especially since they did not choose the roommate to begin with? It seems to me that there is only a downside for the landlord.

The landlord might want to include both roommates on the same lease, but that simply means that they can go after either of you for the full rent.