<p>Not sure if this is the right place but figured that some parents had to deal with something like this before. </p>
<p>There are 4 of us and one had financial troubles and just told us he's not coming back to school next year. </p>
<p>We signed a joint lease and our parents co-signed it and got something notarized. So IMO they aren't letting us out of the lease. I have a backup plan and so does 1 of my other roommates if for some reason they let us out of the lease (doubtful though). My other roommate I am not sure what he would do but there are a few postings I have seen (and cheaper then what he would be paying, so I am not too worried about him). </p>
<p>The one who is breaking the lease is going to call the place tomorrow to see what they say. One of my roommates has a cousin that commutes but has hinted towards regretting not living closer to the action so we will try and talk to him. </p>
<p>If that doesn't work, off to scouring facebook and posting on craiglist. </p>
<p>As it stands right now, the 3 of us would have to pay an extra ~$1900 for the year...so basically wiping out what we would have saved from leaving the dorms lol. </p>
<p>And how to treat the guy breaking the lease? I don't wanna be a total d%ck and make him pay the whole $500/mo if he is having financial problems but is it unreasonable to ask him to maybe cover the cost if we find someone that will take it cheaper? To me that is fair/kind of a compromise. </p>
<p>It's a pretty nice house (campus standards, haha. My mom cried a little when we drove by it hahaha) we are moving into, extremely close to campus and workout facilities, hence the relatively high price (which everyone will be looking for cheap I'm sure haha). </p>
<p>Not quite sure how to proceed. Have a friend back home that has a wanderlust (and loves my school's sports teams haha) and has a job that he can probably find similar work in my college city so I might hit him up if we can't find anything in a week or two. </p>
<p>If he signed the lease, won’t the landlord hold him/his parents responsible for the term of the lease? It would seem the landlord would go after them for non payment.</p>
<p>I’ll have to dig out the lease, but I think they got us on the hook for the full amount for the year, like $22,000 all 4 of us combined instead of $5500 each. The language was a little quirky but they just wanted $2000 a month, they don’t care where it comes from (ie I was gonna pay slightly more since I was getting a bigger room). I had a law student review it so I wouldn’t be on the hook for $22k by myself haha. </p>
<p>I’m not quite sure what is gonna happen lol.</p>
<p>It’s only May, I think you will be successful in replacing him. Does your school have some kind of housing forum where you could post the opening?</p>
<p>I realize it’s too late now, but you four should have made an agreement ahead of time about what the procedure would be if one of you needed to break the lease for financial, health, etc. reasons. In my Dd’s four person apartment, each agreed that they would pay the rent until they found another renter, in the case of having to leave. The onus of finding a renter was on the person leaving. It sounds like none of you considered the (fairly high) possibility of someone wanting to leave before the lease was up. Live and learn.</p>
<p>I would tell this ex-roommate that he would need to find someone to replace him. Yes, it is a shame that he wouldn’t be coming back to the school, but it is his responsibility to find another roommate. At the mean time, I would try to find another rm as soon as possible.</p>
<p>When my older daughter was signing a lease with her best friend, I told her that she had 2 options, 1) an agreement with the landlord that it would be individual lease, 2) if it’s to be a joint lease then we would need to have a side agreement with her parents. I ended up negotiating a contract with the landlord to have the parents as the guarantors (not typical), in exchange each roommate would have a separate lease with the landlord. In the event of default by either roommate, the remaining roommate would have the option of finding another roommate, but it would ultimately be the landlord’s responsibility. The new roommate would have to be a student from the school and of same sex. </p>
<p>My kid thought I was crazy for putting all of that in the lease, but I told her that there was no guarantee that her friend would return or if she would find another apartment. She thought it would appear that I didn’t trust her best friend. I loved her friend, but business is business.</p>
<p>The only down side of the roommate who is leaving finding someone is that the replacement could be anybody. If I were stuck like this, I would rather try to find a replacement. </p>
<p>In my daughter’s lease, it essentially said that if one roommate did not pay, the other was on the hook for the whole rent. I do-signed everything and made sure that we could afford to pay the whole bill if necessary. </p>
<p>Happykid’s group lost a roommate last summer between finding the apartment and signing the lease. Through the magic of Facebook, they had pinned down a replacement roommate within 48 hours. Stay in touch with your roommates (including the one who had to back out), and work all of your contacts. There is every chance you can fill that space before classes start.</p>
<p>I think the guy leaving (or you roommates) either find a 1/4 subletter… or the guy leaving must pay… at least they will not be on the hook for tuition. But hopefully you willl find a 4th.</p>
<p>A friend of mine has had to do that for her son when he dropped out of college - he did not find a sub-lettr so he stayed there himself and got a job…</p>
<p>Must pay is only as realistic as you can make it. A piece of paper like a lease is worthless unless you are willing to enforce it. In reality that can be very tough. You going to sue the kid or the parents in another state maybe? Take the lumps and find a new roommate.</p>
Good luck finding a landlord agreeable to that. Speaking as a landlord with an apartment near a college, there’s no way I’d agree to that arrangement. One roomie drops out of school, I have to chase him and his parents for one quarter of the rent (hopeless exercise if he’s out of state), while the other roomies have zero incentive to fill his spot. Not happening.</p>
<p>Sounds like the lease states that you are all jointly and severally liable for the rent. Legally, the landlord can chase any of you for the entire rent; likewise, if one person fails to pay, the rest of you have to pay or are in arrears (and can be evicted).</p>
<p>IMHO, tell the person who is backing out of the lease that the following expenses are on him:
*Cost of putting up a Craigslist ad ($25)
*Rent until you all find someone to live there
*1/4th of utilities like phone, cable, wifi
*Any difference between what the subletter pays and he is supposed to pay.</p>
<p>It’s reasonable enough that he will likely be on board with it, and it will reduce your costs.</p>
<p>Given that he wants someone who can pay the full rent, and you all want someone whom you can live with, you may have to compromise. He may find someone who can pay the full rent whom you all don’t want to live with, but you may prefer someone who cannot pay it all. That’s when you and your hosuemates might have to pay some of the difference.</p>
<p>Likewise, if you are getting a semi-random person in there, you may want to do something regarding utility expenses. It might be best to charge the person a flat fee for all utilities, and then you and your chosen housemates can figure out who owes money to whom.</p>
<p>Finally, reserve the right to kick out the new roomie if he doesn’t pay his rent on time: the worst situation is to be stuck with a person whom you don’t really know, and be stuck with the extra rent.</p>
<p>MommaJ—Every apt. my kids rented during college was set up this way. Each roommate signed a separate lease. Each roommate was responsible for his/her own personal lease. Each student paid their share as per their own lease directly to the landlord. If one kid backed out of the lease, the others were not responsible to cover for him/her.</p>
<p>Joint and several liability is the norm. At some properties in some markets, landlords will rent student housing by the bedroom and each student will only be severally liable for his portion of the rent. There are many areas where this is not an option, though.</p>
<p>OP, check your lease to see if subletting is allowed and whether you need consent, and then I’d start looking for a replacement roommate. Even if you feel like it’s his responsibility to find a replacement, it’s in your best interest to work on this as well. You can tell the roommate who’s walking that he needs to pay his share until a replacement is found, but you may have trouble collecting. The landlord will probably find it easier to collect rent from the remaining 3 tenants (he has the leverage to evict you if you don’t pay; his leverage to get the other guy to pay is much less). And the landlord doesn’t even have to try to collect from the other guy, and you’ll still be liable.</p>
<p>I have never seen that kind of lease available and I live in an area with a lot of colleges. I agree that this depends very much on the area.</p>
<p>I did have a roommate duck out on the lease once. He had moved to the area and was about to start school and his girlfriend dumped him, so he went back home and never came back without telling us. We had to pay until we could find someone else. You can tell the person leaving to pay but it holds no weight (and if they’re leaving for financial reasons they may just say they don’t have money to anyway).</p>
<p>You could sublet, but you also may be able to just change that part of the lease over if subletting is an issue.</p>
<p>I was told that landlords at D’s school didn’t negotiate either, but I offered something they wanted (guaranteed payment from me) and in exchange the girls had their individual leases. I know a lot of parents want their students to sign their own lease, but I was responsible for the payment and I didn’t want to be on the hook if the roommate should back out.</p>
<p>I think the OP would be best served by finding a replacement roomate and not expecting the person who isn’t returning to do it. </p>
<p>The OP will then have a say in who he will be living with. </p>
<p>You know that the roomate who isn’t returning will pick the first person interested simply to fill the spot and to avoid having to pay rent for a place he isn’t going to live in.</p>
<p>In most college towns/cities it won’t take more than a couple of days to fill a spot in a decent place close to campus.</p>
<p>If you all co-signed the lease, and very likely your parents did too as most college rentals close-to-campus require that, then all the students and all the parents on the lease are ALL fully responsible for 100% of the lease.</p>
<p>Just because there are 4 of you on the lease doesn’t mean that you’re only responsible for 1/4 of it unless the lease specifically says that…and I doubt that it does. If the other 3 students / families all died or left the country then you/your parents would be responsible for the full lease if the landlord couldn’t locate the others.</p>
<p>The leasing company or rental owner can go after any or all of you.</p>
<p>So, your choices are:
—Get soon to be ex-roomie and his parents to pay his share of rent until you replace him, however long that takes. If he doesn’t, you’ll have to ante up the $ (and then you sue your ex-roomie + parents for it) or landlord will come after all of you, not just him.
—And go find a replacement roommate asap, but be choosy because you’ll of course have to live with them!</p>