Questions to Ask Potential Roommate College
For sharing an apartment off campus, where the risk is financial as well as social. These questions are about the lease and who signs it, the deposit, guarantors, how utilities are split, what happens over the summer, and how you would replace someone who leaves early. For a dorm room assigned by housing, the money questions matter far less and the habits questions matter more.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Which area are you looking at, and what is the most you can pay a month?
Why ask it
The ceiling matters more than the target, because it decides which places you can realistically view together. Someone whose absolute limit is your comfortable figure will be stretched all year and will start resenting the apartment by December.
Would you be on the lease, and can you pass a credit check or provide a guarantor?
Why ask it
On most joint leases each tenant is liable for the whole rent, not just their share. If they cannot pass a check or produce a cosigner, you may end up as the sole signatory carrying the legal risk for both of you without realising it.
Can you cover the deposit and first month now, or would you need to pay it in parts?
Why ask it
Ask about timing rather than willingness. This is the step at which most shares quietly fail, and someone paying their deposit in three instalments in August will be short again in January.
If the bedrooms are different sizes, how should we split the rent?
Why ask it
Settle the rule before you view anywhere, while neither of you has fallen for a particular room. Once somebody wants the large bedroom with the window, the conversation stops being about fairness and starts being about the room.
How do you want to handle utilities: one name per account with reimbursement, or split accounts?
Why ask it
Whoever's name goes on an account owns the debt if the other stops paying, and it follows them afterwards. Decide who takes which account and what day reimbursement happens, before the first bill lands.
What should happen if one of us cannot pay on time one month?
Why ask it
The realistic question, because most students have one bad month. You want a plan, a week's warning, the other covers, repaid by a stated date, rather than an insistence that the situation will never arise.
How long do you want the lease for, and would you stay over the summer?
Why ask it
Summer is where off-campus shares come apart, since leases usually run twelve months and the academic year runs nine. Establish who is paying for June and July before anyone signs anything.
If you went home or abroad for a term, would you want to sublet your room?
Why ask it
Check their intention and the lease's rules, since many prohibit subletting outright. A subletter you did not choose living in the next room for a semester is a foreseeable problem and an avoidable one.
What do you want to do about groceries: share and split, or separate shelves?
Why ask it
Sharing works only with a system and honest appetites. Separate shelves is dull and it almost never causes an argument, which counts for a great deal over twelve months.
How often do you cook, and who cleans up after?
Why ask it
The combination is what matters. Someone who cooks nightly and cleans as they go is easy to live with. Someone who cooks nightly and cleans tomorrow produces the kitchen that everybody eventually stops using.
What is your standard for the shared rooms, as opposed to your own?
Why ask it
Nearly everyone holds two different standards, and that is fine. What matters is whether their shared-space standard is at least as high as yours, because in practice the lower standard always wins by default.
Would you rather run a cleaning rota, or split the cost of a cleaner?
Why ask it
Shared between three or four people a fortnightly cleaner is often affordable, and it takes cleaning out of the negotiation altogether. Their reaction also shows how they think about spending money to avoid friction.
Do you have a car, and would parking be a problem where we are looking?
Why ask it
Easy to forget until a residents' permit costs more than expected or there is one space between three people. Both are worth checking against a specific address before you commit to it.
Do you smoke or vape, and is there anything you would want in the apartment that the lease might not allow?
Why ask it
A breach found in a shared apartment normally costs everybody the deposit rather than just the person responsible. Asking directly is much cheaper than discovering it at the final inspection.
Do you have a pet, or want one?
Why ask it
Even where the lease permits it, a pet changes cleaning, noise, travel plans, and the deposit. Someone who says they might get a cat at some point is telling you they intend to get a cat.
On a normal weekend, how many people would you have over, and how late?
Why ask it
Get a number and a time. Not many people is not a shared understanding, and you will find out where the gap is at two in the morning before something important on Monday.
Would a partner be staying regularly? Would they contribute?
Why ask it
A reliable and usually unspoken source of resentment in a shared apartment. Someone effectively living there uses the utilities, the hot water, and the kitchen without being on the lease, and this is far easier to agree before that person exists.
In your last place, did you get the deposit back? What was held?
Why ask it
A history question rather than a promise. What was withheld and why tells you how they treat a property they do not own, which is exactly what you are trying to find out.
If one of us left early, who would be responsible for their rent until someone replaced them?
Why ask it
Joint leases usually make everyone liable for the whole rent. Say the answer out loud now so nobody is shocked by it later.
What would make you want to move out, and how much notice would you give?
Why ask it
It gets both the reasons and the practicalities in one answer. A month is a common expectation and it needs stating.
Signing a lease with someone
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Understand what you are signing
Joint and several liability
Most shared leases make every tenant responsible for the entire rent, not a share of it. If one person leaves and stops paying, the landlord can pursue whoever remains for the full amount. Read for this phrase specifically and ask the letting agent to confirm it in writing.
Individual leases are safer and rarer
Some purpose-built student buildings offer per-room leases, which contain the damage if a roommate defaults. Where that option exists it is usually worth a slightly higher rent, particularly if you are sharing with someone you do not know well.
Get the deposit handling in writing
Note who paid what into the deposit, and agree that it comes back in the same proportions. Photograph every room, including existing marks, on the day you get the keys, with timestamps, and send the photos to everyone on the lease.
Check the guarantor requirement early
Many student leases require a parent or guarantor with income in the same country. This can rule out an otherwise ideal roommate, and it is much better established before you have viewed four apartments together.
Do these before anyone signs
- 1View at least one place together, and watch what they ask the agent about. It is a free preview of what they will care about later.
- 2Agree the rent split rule for unequal rooms in writing, before viewing rooms you might want.
- 3Confirm each person can produce the deposit and the first month on the same day.
- 4Assign the utility accounts by name, and set a fixed date each month for reimbursement.
- 5Write down the summer arrangement, including who pays if someone goes home for three months.
- 6Agree the guest rule and the partner rule while both are still hypothetical.
Keeping the money simple
- One shared expense tracker that everyone can see beats anybody's memory, and it settles disputes without an argument.
- Pay rent from each person's own account where the landlord allows it, so nobody is chasing anybody.
- Keep a small shared float for cleaning supplies and toilet paper rather than taking turns, which nobody tracks accurately.
- Settle up on a fixed day each month. Rolling debts between roommates sour faster than anything else in a shared apartment.
What goes wrong off campus
Signing with a friend without asking the hard questions
The fact that someone is good company says nothing about whether they can pay rent on the first of the month. Being close makes the money conversation more awkward and more necessary, not less.
Nobody asked about the summer
A twelve-month lease covering a nine-month school year catches students out every year. Ask about June, July, and August by name.
Leaving the third roommate out of the agreement
Two people who know each other and one who arrived through a listing is a common setup, and the odd one out tends to absorb the worst of every decision. Write the agreement with all three present or it is not an agreement.
No move-in inventory
Without dated photographs of every room, a deducted deposit becomes an argument between roommates about who caused what. Twenty minutes with a phone on the first day prevents that entirely.