Roommate agreement: what to include

A roommate agreement is a short document the people living together write for themselves. It doesn’t replace the lease and usually doesn’t bind the landlord, but it turns the assumptions everyone makes in the first week into decisions you can point to later. This guide lists what to put in one and how to word the money parts so they still work when the rent changes or someone leaves.

01Read the lease first

Your agreement sits on top of the lease, not instead of it. As the Texas Attorney General’s renter guidance puts it, “The most important source of information about your relationship with your landlord is your rental agreement, whether it is written or oral.” Check who is named on the lease, what it says about guests, subletting, pets and notice, and whether every person living there is allowed to. Your agreement should not promise anything the lease forbids.

02Money: write the formula, not just the numbers

• Rent split. The method (by room, by income, by bids) and its inputs: “40% of the rent is shared per person; the rest by bedroom floor area; the private bath counts 1.25×.” A formula gives the right answer again when the rent goes up.
• Who pays the landlord, and when. If one person pays, when do the others pay them, and how is that recorded?
• Utilities and internet. Which bills are shared, which part is split by days at home, and how long an absence has to be before it counts (many households use a week).
• Shared purchases. Groceries, cleaning supplies, furniture: shared or individual, and what happens to shared furniture when someone leaves.
• The deposit. Who put in how much. This number decides who gets what back, so record it on day one.
• Late payments. What happens if someone pays the household late, and who covers a landlord late fee caused by one person.

03Living together

• Guests and partners. How often overnight guests are fine, and the point at which a regular guest should start contributing to bills.
• Quiet hours and working from home. Especially if someone works shifts or from home all day.
• Cleaning. A rota or a split of tasks, and what “clean” means for shared areas.
• Shared space. What can be left in the living room or kitchen, and for how long.
• Smoking, pets, parking and storage, where the lease allows them.
• How you resolve disagreements: a regular household check-in is often enough.

04When someone wants to leave

This is the section people skip and most regret skipping. Decide in advance how much notice a roommate gives the others (often at least as much as the lease requires of all of you), who finds a replacement, whether the replacement needs everyone’s approval, how the last month’s rent is prorated, how the leaver’s share of the deposit is paid back, and how the last bills are split. Where the landlord’s consent is needed for a new occupant or a sublet, the agreement should say who asks.

New York’s Attorney General gives a useful example of why this matters: in that state, “A tenant must inform the landlord of the name of any occupant within 30 days of the occupant moving into the apartment or 30 days of a landlord’s request for this information.” Rules like this differ by state, so look up yours when you write the leaving section.

05Keeping it short and current

One or two pages is enough. Date it, have everyone sign or reply “agreed” in writing, and keep it with the lease. Revisit it when someone moves in or out or when the rent changes. If you track money in a shared household ledger, the agreed split and the deposit contributions can live there, so the agreement itself only needs the principles.

Sources

1. Renter’s Rights, Office of the Texas Attorney General. www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/consumer-protection/home-real-estate-and-travel/renters-rights
2. Residential Tenants’ Rights Guide, New York State Attorney General. ag.ny.gov/publications/residential-tenants-rights-guide
3. How to file a complaint against a landlord, USAGov. www.usa.gov/tenant-rights