My dad and I were talking and he told me this story. Friends of his who have moved to Florida have their son living in their house. They said he is doing renovations inside, like retiling floors, drywalling, resurfacing the driveway. Therefore, he does not pay them rent, but is paying for the materials he uses to fix the house. Everyone was happy with this arrangement.
Recently, his girlfriend moved into the house and she is also not paying rent. My dad’s friends feel like he should have asked them if it was OK before he moved her in. They also think she should be paying some rent, since she’s not married to the son, nor is she doing any renovating. Apparently he feels that it shouldn’t matter to them, since they are giving him the place for free, and the work he’s doing would cost them from a contractor much more than the rent (I don’t know if this is true or not).
What is your opinion? Is the son taking advantage by moving the girlfriend in rent-free without asking them, or are the parents being controlling and petty by wanting consent and rent? I really can’t decide, but I figured you guys would have some interesting points of view.
I think no matter what your rent agreement is, you need to get permission to have another person (or for that matter, a pet that wasn’t negotiated to start with).
If the parents live in the house too, then absolutely the son should have asked and/or the GF should pay rent. It’s one thing to have your own offspring there in exchange for them doing household tasks, but another thing entirely to put up with a stranger as well.
They live in Florida, he lives in NY. They don’t want to make a big issue of it because someday he might marry this girl, and they don’t want her to hate them or anything over this. But they do think maybe he’s taking advantage.
Taking advantage how? It doesn’t cost them anything for the girl to live there. The parents presumably wouldn’t charge her rent or have expected the son to ask permission if the couple were married.
I don’t agree with parents letting grown chldren live rent-free, but this is between the parents and son. Who is paying the mortgage and utilities. If the parents are footing all the expenses, they should have been asked. If the son is paying the utilities, it’s his business.
I think this is one of those things where it really depends how you look at it.
If the repairs are his rent, then I think he’s renting the house and has the right to do what he wants with it, including moving his gf in. It would have been polite to clear it with them, but he’s been at most, tacky.
If, on the other hand, his parents are letting him live rent free because he’s their son, and he’s renovating the house because they are his parents–if it isn’t a quid pro quo, if it’s a “family helps out family as much as they can”, then he should have consulted them because the family as a whole, not he as an individual, makes the call.
I suspect we have a problem here where the son thinks he’s the one who’s being a mensch because he’s renovating their house at less than they’d pay to have it done, busting his ass, and since he has the moral high ground in the “contributing to family” pool, he doesn’t have to ask. The parents probably feel, on the other hand, that they are the mensches, letting him live there rent free, and that his repairs are a “thank you” for that gift, which gives them the moral high ground and control over the details of the property. I have no idea who is actually getting the better end of the deal: on one hand, it’s really easy to minimize someone else’s physical labor, but on the other, it’s really easy to overestimate the quality of the work you are doing.
I’d say he should have asked, since this is more a casual arrangement and not a formal lease. If I had a trade with a friend to stay in my condo, I’d be annoyed to find out another person just up and moved in. It wouldn’t cost me any more, but my intent in the deal was not to give the other person run of the place.
That aside, there’s something about the parents perspective that bothers me, they’re viewing the son as his girlfriend as two separate renters, and each individually owes or does not owe their parents some amount of rent. They want rent money to come from the girlfriend and not from their son? well, that’s none of the parents concern who pays the monthly bills. The couple themselves may have separate finances, but that’s between the son and his girlfriend to figure out up, it’s not for the parents to dictate.
Now, if they to say that the couple together now owes X amount of rent, that’s fine, it’s their house and they get to price it how they want. But their logic that she should pay rent because she’s not doing work and isn’t married to their son seems less about fair compensation and more about them keeping tabs on their son’s personal life.
The way I look at it is, if this was a normal landlord/tenant relationship, then having his girlfriend move in would be none of the landlord’s business as long as the rent is being paid. If this is a rental situation, informal though it is, then it’s not the parent’s business. If not, then it’s at most slightly rude.
This is not quite true. I have a tenant, and his lease says he can have one person live there, himself. He cannot just move someone else in without telling me or asking me, as long as he pays the rent. It would be a violation of his lease.
It’s a standard clause that I recall from all my rental situations and leases I’ve used. Enumerating who gets to live there is an important part of the lease, lest someone move half a dozen people into your one bedroom apartment without permission-- the landlord has to have some recourse in that situation.
Of course, there is no actual lease in my dad’s friend’s situation, so it’s not as clear who should do what.
As long as she isn’t costing them money, (utilities) I can’t see any problem with it. He ought to have asked, but it doesn’t seem he has a formal lease, so they ought to let it go.
Does it make any difference that the son has lived there for years now without paying rent? I think my dad said 5 years. I don’t know how much renovation the house needed, but that seems like a long time to live rent-free because you’re doing repairs. Maybe they do want to get rent for the place but are willing to forego it for their son, not so much for this girlfriend. If he had a platonic male friend move in instead of a girlfriend, would the situation be any different?
While I’m sure your lease will hold up if your tenant moves 6 people into a one-bedroom apartment, in New York you must allow the tenant to share the apartment with his/her immediate family, one additional occupant, and that occupant’s dependent children. You can limit the total number of people to comply with legal standards regarding overcrowding, and the tenant must inform the landlord about the additional occupant, but the courts won’t enforce a lease restricting occupancy to the tenant or to the tenant and his immediate family . I’m sure NY is not the only state with such a law.
The apartment I rent is legally only allowed to have one person live in it, per the safety inspector. I’m sure this is not the case with my dad’s friends’ house, though. And frankly, you’re talking about his parents. Would be nice to just be polite and ask them.
I mean, consider how incredibly rude that is if, for example, the parents don’t like people (particularly their kids) shacking up with people who aren’t married to them. In their house!
They are elderly (in their 70’s) and if they’re anything like my dad, they are not OK with shacking up. Which may be what’s at the heart of this dispute for all I know.
Sure, it would be nice if he had asked them. I might be mildly annoyed if my son didn’t ask- but I wouldn’t think he had taken advantage of me because he had a girl he might marry move in and it wouldn’t bother me enough to mention it to friends. (The five years might make me feel taken advantage of, but the presence of the girlfriend is a different issue). Something else is going on with your father’s friends- maybe they think five years is way too long for the son to live rent-free, and have seized on a convenient excuse for changing the arrangement before it turns into a lifetime. Maybe they don’t think the the couple should live together before marriage. Maybe they just don’t like the girl.
In reality, if the girlfriend is paying rent, the son is most likely going to be paying some of it in one way or another. People who form a joint household split the joint expenses in different ways, but it’s never going to be " my parents are only charging you rent, so you pay the rent, and we’ll split the rest"