Renting a house to 3 students.

[Allen Lopez]

Ok so I have a house that I want to rent out. I wanted to rent it out to a family or someone who just wants a house for themselves. I have three applicants, all are currently roommates. They are students all with different amount of time left in school. They all have pretty good credit scores, good records, no pets, non smokers. I don’t want to rent the house on a per room basis and have three individual leases.

How to I go about renting the house out? I would put all on one lease, but would like to collect rent together and not from three different people.

How do I decide who to make the primary person responsible for paying the rent?

What happens if one of them leaves and the other two can’t (or don’t want to) make up the difference?

Do I get their parents to co-sign for them?

Im in Louisiana.

[Nat C.]

@Allen Lopez

Don’t accept anything less than first, last and security. In my experience, students are higher risk tenants, so you definitely don’t want to reduce the amount you have in insurance.

Your lease should have a Severally and Jointly Liable clause. This means two or more persons are fully responsible equally for the liability.

All parties have joint liability, giving responsibility for the full amount of the obligation to each party. In this case, if one of the tenants dies or declares bankruptcy, the full amount of the obligation falls to the other party. As such, one or all of the parties can be sued for the full obligation.