While you share the home with roommates, you may be thinking about how you will share your space and household duties without making each other mad. Living with roommates has many advantages, such as lower rent and preparing communal meals, or having family game nights. Establishing a formal roommate agreement is a smart way of ensuring that your living environment is comfortable and happy, regardless of how much you enjoy your roommate’s company. Precisely if you are a friend with your roommates earlier, you move in together. But many of us don’t know much about roommate agreement. Don’t worry! Read this article carefully. I have mentioned everything about roommate agreement in this article.
So let’s start the article with the basic definition of the Roommate Agreement.
Roommate Agreement
A roommate agreement is to hold peace and comfort between you and your roommates on good terms. It is also named a roommate contract. The agreement formally sets out the house rules, such as the visitor policies and maintenance duties, and the payment of utilities, leases, and rents. I agree that disagreements are unavoidable among humans who live together in a commonplace. Still, this agreement is a perfect way to lead you through any problems that stop any issues from becoming significant. A roommate agreement helps you open contact with the roommates before moving. It shows you some of the most common roommates’ concerns while living together.
Potential issues
While bringing together a roommate agreement, some potential problems are much needed to consider first. Some of them are as follows.
1- Rent payment
When you’re not making the rent payment to the landlord individually, your deal must specify who pays how much rent and who is responsible for receiving payments from each and sending them to the landlord. You can also determine in advance if rent is shared equally or if some roommates pay more than others, e.g., due to bedroom size.
2- Communal Things payment
In specific households, roommates combine their resources to buy food, go grocery shopping, and prepare the most of the meals. In some situations, each roommate purchases their food, and other roommates must ask for permission before borrowing and using something out of the kitchen that is not theirs. Whatever the case is, your roommate agreement can lay out the grocery shopping strategy, as well as how you’ll pay for such shared expenses, including cleaning products and toilet paper.
3- Bills payment
So apart from the rent, you’ll have to figure out how to pay your monthly bills. Since utility bills are usually in one person’s name, one roommate may be responsible for receiving and submitting payments on behalf of the entire household. There are several bill-splitting applications available that are ideal for this scenario. Additionally, each roommate can choose to pay their bills, such as paying for gas and electricity, while the other roommate pays for Wi-Fi and water. You can also include the date on which roommates must apply their share of the bill for utilities to be paid in full and on schedule.
4- Household Tasks
You need to agree about setting up household tasks about communal living spaces. As part of your roommate contract, you may want to build a chore map that divides up responsibilities for cleaning the toilets, living area, dining room, and kitchen so that no one is left doing all of the work. Do consider additional responsibilities, like garbage collection. It is also a decent option to find out the mutual hopes about how each roommate can start cleaning up. Let’s take an example that you may determine that no one can leave dirty dishes in the kitchen sink for longer than 24 hours or that you can leave books and computers on the coffee table but not the television.
5- Early Departure
Although each roommate may plan to stay for the whole lease period, you may have to move out sooner than expected due to some reasons like getting a job in another place, losing your job and can’t afford rent, or don’t get along with your roommates. Your roommate agreement can specify what will happen if anyone moves out early, such as if they will have to find somebody to lease your bed, how much notice they can provide, and how to handle the security deposit
6- Guest Rules and Guidelines
Roommates differ in perspectives on house guest rules and regulations. This point might be a huge point of debate. Utilize the roommate agreement to plan advance about your guest rules, such as how many consecutive weeks a guest will stay, how often notice to give roommates when a guest is arriving, or if guests are allowed to sleep on the sofa or an air mattress in communal spaces
7- Security Deposit
When we talk about security deposits, the roommate agreement can spell out how you plan to split the security deposit if the landlord doesn’t refund the total amount at the end of the lease period. Will each roommate become responsible for paying for everything they lost in the apartment out of the shared security deposit? To increase the probability of having the maximum security deposit back, do a stroll with your landlord and monitor the property’s condition when moving in and leaving.
Conclusion
The roommate agreement sketches the terms, rules, regulations, conditions, and duties settled by each of the tenants. Setting up mutual goals and avoiding confrontation is easy with a roommate agreement. The completion of all the terms of this contract is critical. So before signing an agreement, kindly take time and consider the above-mentioned potential issues. After that, make your decision to sign the contract wisely. To smooth line the roommate agreement process, contact Aceland Mortgage, LLC for expert opinion and guidance.