Roommate Agreement Template

Among the roommates who sign it, it is a contract like any other, and courts have enforced them — usually in small claims, over unpaid rent or a deposit that never came back. Signing electronically does not weaken it: ESIGN and UETA in the United States and eIDAS in the EU support simple electronic signatures for everyday agreements of this kind. What it cannot do is bind your landlord, who never signed it. General information, not legal advice.

No, and this catches people out constantly. If all of you signed the lease, most leases make you jointly and severally liable, meaning the landlord can pursue any single one of you for the entire rent rather than your share, whatever your private arrangement says. The roommate agreement gives you a claim against whoever did not pay; it does not give the landlord a smaller claim against you. Read the liability clause in your lease first.

Start from square footage, then adjust for what people are really paying for: a private bathroom, closet space, a window onto a quiet street, the room next to the laundry. A common method is to allocate half the rent evenly and the other half by bedroom size, which keeps shared space genuinely shared. Whatever formula you pick, agree on it once and record the resulting amounts — percentages invite renegotiation every time rent moves.

Usually nothing on the landlord's side — most deposits are held until the tenancy itself ends, so a departing roommate is not owed a refund mid-lease. The workable fix is a buy-out: the incoming roommate reimburses the outgoing one directly for their deposit share, and the agreement records the amount and the date. Settle any damage at that same moment rather than at the end of the lease, when a scratched floor becomes an argument about March.

Everyone who sleeps there regularly, including a partner who moved in after the lease was signed and appears nowhere on it. Someone paying part of the rent while existing in no document at all is the arrangement most likely to end badly. Many leases also cap how long a guest can stay before counting as an occupant, and adding a person to the lease needs the landlord's approval.

Cover the rent first if you possibly can, because the landlord's remedy runs against the tenancy, and a late payment or an eviction filing attaches to everyone named on the lease. Then use the agreement: the signed document plus your transfer receipts is what a small-claims filing needs, and often the mention alone resolves it. Pay through a traceable method so the record exists before you need it — cash between roommates is invisible six months later.

They neither sign it nor need to approve it. This is a private arrangement, and plenty of landlords would rather not be handed one. There is one exception worth respecting: if you are the master tenant renting rooms to people who are not on the lease, that is a sublet, and most leases require the landlord's written consent first. Get that consent in writing and file it with the agreement — a verbal "sure, that's fine" is rarely remembered the same way twice.