3 Common Summer Subletting Mistakes to Avoid

By Tamiera Vandegrift on May 6, 2018

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Summer vacation is just around the corner and if you don’t plan to stay in your living space, you might want to consider subletting. What is subletting?

Subletting is the process of temporarily allowing another person to live in your apartment, house, or rental space while you’re away. Since most leases last for an entire year and not just an academic, you can’t exactly move out halfway through without landing yourself in legal trouble. If you’re not taking summer courses and/or not planning to remain in your college town at all, it would probably be too expensive and too inconvenient to continue to pay for rent for a room you’re not even living in. Picking up a subtenant is the best way to save money on rent as you’re essentially playing landlord and allowing another tenant to occupy and pay for the space while you’re away. You’ll be providing another person with a living space and you’ll be saving money for yourself. It’s the definition of a win-win. However, if you’re unfamiliar with the subletting process, it’s easy to fall into tricky territory.

Since most leasing offices aren’t too helpful with the subletting process, it’s easy to fall into a variety of subletting pitfalls. These pitfalls can leave your living space in rough conditions upon your return, leave you with a bunch of debt in your name, or worse, land you in some serious legal trouble. Keep reading for a list of common summer subletting mistakes to avoid before you sign over your space to a subtenant!

paperwork, contract, pen

Image via: www.pexels.com

Mistake #1: Not Informing your Property Manager

Before you even think about subletting, you need to be sure that your lease allows you to do so. If you sublet your living space without your landlord’s knowledge or permission, you could find yourself breaching the terms of your lease, which could get you into serious trouble and potentially evicted from your space altogether! A lease is a binding legal contract and needs to be treated with respect and seriousness. Before you post an advertisement for a sublease or start asking around, review the fine print of your lease several times to make sure that subletting is possible. Then, reach out to your landlord, property manager, or leasing office to double check that you’re allowed to sublet your space. To be extra safe, get your property manager’s permission in writing for your records just in case. Many students try to sublet behind their property manager’s back just to save money, but no rent payment is worth a breach of contract on your record.

Mistake #2: Not Meeting your Subtenant(s)

As you’ve probably seen on social media, most subletting is done via social media. Renters will post advertisements for their space on Facebook group pages and wait for interested parties to message them directly. While this certainly saves both parties a lot of time, you should definitely reconsider handing over the keys to your space to some random stranger before meeting them face-to-face first. As much as we would all like to believe that all potential subtenants are good at heart, respectful, and responsible, it simply isn’t the case. Plenty of horror stories have circulated the subletting world of subtenants that have caused exponential damage to the property, stolen valuable things, or were simply unreliable with payments. To avoid this issue, do as much research on your subtenants as possible. People can put on all types of digital disguises on social media so it is up to you to truly get to know who will be living in your home before they have the keys to the space. Meet with them a few times before you officially put their name on the sublease and most of all, trust your gut. If a potential subtenant doesn’t seem trustworthy, reliable, or financially responsible, you should rethink subletting your space to them. You will definitely save yourself from a splitting headache later down the road if John Doe from Facebook Marketplace ends up putting several bowling ball-sized holes in your bedroom walls and misses several months of rent.

bench, talking, friends

Image via: www.pexels.com

Mistake #3: Not Knowing your Responsibilities

Even though you are technically putting the lease in someone else’s name by subletting, you are still responsible for the space. You are responsible for the monthly payments still (your subtenant would simply be sending you their share in most cases), you are still responsible for the state of the living space, and you’re responsible for recovering and handing in the keys to the space when the lease is over. Depending on the specific subletting terms of your specific living space, you might find yourself being responsible for more or less. The more you know, the more you can prepare for and keep an eye on. The less you know, the more dollar signs that might come out of your security deposit at the end of the lease.

Subletting is a great way to save money on your living space when you’re away from your college town, but if you’re not careful to avoid these mistakes, you could land yourself in a lot of financial and legal trouble. Get to know your subtenant, review the terms of your lease, and exercise responsibility so that you’ll have the smoothest subletting experience possible.

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