One of the things I teach my students to do in rentals where roommates live together is to collect the rent in one instrument.  This means all the roommates gather their individual rents together and one designated person writes out one check or gets one money order to send to the landlord.  You don’t have to worry about chasing down late rent x number of times, assessing late fees individually, or tracking security deposits and deductions from them separately.  The jointly and severally liable clause in a lease sort of implies this, if you have one, but it only partially covers this issue and you want to be explicit.  You want to take this clause one step further and treat all roommates as one from a money perspective.

Here’s a good example of when not doing this causes unnecessary hassle.  One of my property managers slipped up and treated roommates individually and is now spending time chasing down a security deposit.  He could have avoided the time and hassle he’s dealing with, which by the way, he doesn’t get paid for since I pay him on rents collected only (not on security deposits collected).

We have 5 roommates living together in a unit.  At the end of the school year, which is also the end of the lease term, a couple roommates left and a couple new ones moved in.  The new ones applied and passed screening so all was good there.  The problem was born when my property manager refunded one-fifth of the security deposit to each of the two departing tenants.  The fact that this happened got lost in the shuffle and now one of the new roommates that moved in never paid his portion of the deposit and is turning out to be difficult about it.  We’re 6 weeks into the lease and we still have a partial deposit in our account - not cool.

What my manager should have done was made a clean break at the end of the lease term, with the “one instrument” clause in mind.  He should have refunded the security deposit in one lump sum to all 5 roommates collectively at the end of their lease.  They can split it up however they decide.  He should have immediately then collected one lump security deposit from the new set of roommates, without regard for who paid what portion of it.  Some of the roommates are sharing bedrooms and some have their own room and I would imagine they agreed to pay different amounts of rent.  I don’t much care because it’s not my business.

This money shuffle at the end of the lease may happen partially on paper, meaning my manager may not literally hand the deposit off, only to collect it back again minutes later.  The majority of the deposit may well stay in our bank account.  The point is you don’t want to get caught up in the details of who is paying what.  One person is designated as the payor (the roommates can decide who this is and write it into the roommate agreement that you have them all sign), and this person is responsible for shuffling money between everyone and handing or mailing the landlord the funds.  Once names of who is paying or not paying come up, you basically need to take a “talk to the hand” stance and not allow the tenants to trouble you with their details.

This is one example of how having policies, and having the forms that allow you to enforce your policies, can prevent and eliminate a time consuming task for you or your manager.