Please check your state's laws about recording people without telling them. You'll want to know if that is legal or not before you put up a camera or do the voice memo thing again.
My state operates under a "one-party consent" law w.r.t. audio recordings, which I believe covers me as one of the conversational parties. If I'm misunderstanding that then I'll keep it in mind going forward - the goal is to start protecting myself just in case.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
If you don't want to go as far as a lock on your door, at least take pictures of the valuable things you own (this is good advice for anyone, really).
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Please check your state's laws about recording people without telling them. You'll want to know if that is legal or not before you put up a camera or do the voice memo thing again.
My state operates under a "one-party consent" law w.r.t. audio recordings, which I believe covers me as one of the conversational parties. If I'm misunderstanding that then I'll keep it in mind going forward - the goal is to start protecting myself just in case.
IIRC yea, if you're party to the conversation then recording it is fine. Note about that camera idea earlier, if you were just to leave an audio recording device on and leave that would be illegal. Security cams work on different things but I'd be really really hesitant to set one up anywhere in an apartment without everybody knowing. Your private locked room is the only maybe spot on that and I would talk to real lawyer about that.
I think I'd be a lot more likely to just get a lock for my door than set up a camera or some sort of recording device in my room anyway. The legality thing is icing, but a simple lock gives me plenty of peace of mind. I'll wait and see about whether #1 follows through this week before figuring that out.
I think I'd be a lot more likely to just get a lock for my door than set up a camera or some sort of recording device in my room anyway. The legality thing is icing, but a simple lock gives me plenty of peace of mind. I'll wait and see about whether #1 follows through this week before figuring that out.
Please please please PLEASE make sure you have renters insurance and then go through and take photos of any valuable things you have and then a few just wide shots of the things in your room that you own. You most likely will never need to reference the photos but just have them on hand in the off chance something bad happens either from this or even down the road.
It's so much better to take 15 minutes now and have peace of mind than it is to be scrambling after the fact and adding more stress to the burden.
Please check your state's laws about recording people without telling them. You'll want to know if that is legal or not before you put up a camera or do the voice memo thing again.
My state operates under a "one-party consent" law w.r.t. audio recordings, which I believe covers me as one of the conversational parties. If I'm misunderstanding that then I'll keep it in mind going forward - the goal is to start protecting myself just in case.
Check into it to be sure. My state allows one party consent for phone calls but doing it in person without both party's consent is illegal.
I don't think it's a bad idea to protect yourself, you just don't want to run afoul of the law.
Another thing you can do, though it may feel weird, is send an email after a meeting like that with "here's what we talked about and decided, you're going to do X, I'm going to do Y, if anything I've written here is inaccurate let me know." Then you've memorialized the conversation for future reference.
Assuming these are college or fresh out of college kids, If they've never split up a lease on their own, the amount of people who are totally clueless on this sort of stuff in their early 20s can be kind of staggering but not out of the ordinary. I did not live on my own until I was 22, and wasn't financially independent from my parents till I was 25ish.
I've never been in an apartment situation where the person with their own bathroom wasn't paying more for it. If they didn't realize it when they were getting into this lease, and then made this same sort of bid for apartment advice, the question from his angle is "I want to move my girlfriend in, but there's a guy already in the master! Do you think he'd switch with me if I told him we'll split the utilities 4 ways?". My immediate response would be "what about rent" and then I would be a little taken aback if that person then explained the guy was paying the same amount as he was for his smaller room.
Hopefully this doesn't come off as playing devils advocate, I just think its fairly likely that someone probably gave them damning advice about paying equal shares for their small rooms, as that is not generally how you set up a lease when there are obvious amenity advantages. Legally they are the ones in the wrong 100% and you should protect yourself, but if they haven't shown themselves to be horrible people up to this point, I would take that into consideration. I wouldn't go from 1 to nuclear in an extremely obvious way until they are very obviously not cooperating, personally.
I'm strongly considering a lock for my door - the worry is just that it will "reset" any progress I was able to make tonight w.r.t. trying to reframe the situation as a more potentially united front. I may wait and see if there's a follow-through this week first.
Offer it up to all roommates and help them install it.
Just say it's to keep everyone honest and make sure everyone has a private space that's theirs.
It's only a big deal if someone is an asshole and is going to make it a big deal. "What do you think I'm going to steal something?" is something a person who was planning on pilfering stuff says, usually, in a shared living situation if it's not in a joking tone.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Also though, make sure you dont need to provide the office with that key, if they come in to inspect fire alarms/sprinklers and cant get into your room because you installed a lock, you might catch hot shit and a fee for it.
Assuming these are college or fresh out of college kids, If they've never split up a lease on their own, the amount of people who are totally clueless on this sort of stuff in their early 20s can be kind of staggering but not out of the ordinary. I did not live on my own until I was 22, and wasn't financially independent from my parents till I was 25ish.
I've never been in an apartment situation where the person with their own bathroom wasn't paying more for it. If they didn't realize it when they were getting into this lease, and then made this same sort of bid for apartment advice, the question from his angle is "I want to move my girlfriend in, but there's a guy already in the master! Do you think he'd switch with me if I told him we'll split the utilities 4 ways?". My immediate response would be "what about rent" and then I would be a little taken aback if that person then explained the guy was paying the same amount as he was for his smaller room.
Hopefully this doesn't come off as playing devils advocate, I just think its fairly likely that someone probably gave them damning advice about paying equal shares for their small rooms, as that is not generally how you set up a lease when there are obvious amenity advantages. Legally they are the ones in the wrong 100% and you should protect yourself, but if they haven't shown themselves to be horrible people up to this point, I would take that into consideration. I wouldn't go from 1 to nuclear in an extremely obvious way until they are very obviously not cooperating, personally.
That kind of damning advice seems to have been exactly what happened here, at least with #2. What I explained to them last night was that the order of operations here looks way too sketchy for me to trust. If everything is fine for six months, and then within the space of twelve hours there's a new human being in the space AND sudden interest about rearranging the living situation, those two things are not going to be easy for me to dissociate.
The order of business needs to be for #1 to handle the illegal situation we've been put into FIRST (and within the business week) before we sit down and renegotiate the financial split. But as long as the former happens, the latter is not something that bothers me!
Master bedroom plus bathroom and parking space probably should be a slight increase in the share of the rent for the person who has them.
Even with that being said, it's not reasonable to just demand it because someone moves in a partner and thinks it's better.
They mentioned you taking advantage somehow... What age group is this? How stable has their relationship been? Going by the maturity so far, it's going to be a rough year. Give them time enough to be adults and go through the lease office and hope they are remarkably drama free but plan for the worst and start saving to move or break lease in case.
Definitely don't give up the master, maybe offer to pick up 10-15% more rent if it really comes down to it.
Offering to keep your rent the same means #2 saves 33% on their rent and the occupants of #1's room will bear a 33% increase in rent burden to reflect the 33% increase in total common-area usage (while not reflecting that their usage is doubling from the status quo).
That seems more than equitable for them, so I wouldn't even start there; but definitely don't accept paying more.
My experience here was many years ago, but people generally just paid an extra $100 for the master. IE: if your rent was 1200, you'd pay 1100/n + 100. 375 / 275 in a four way split.
ArbitraryDescriptor on
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
edited January 2019
I'll just throw it out here that a bigger room may not be the most advantages.
My dorm room was next to the bathroom which was great if I needed to go, but less great when some chucklenuts flooded it.
As for the actual situation, it sounds like you're handling it very well.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
I mean recording issues aside, this seams like a really good use of meeting minutes.
Hey these are the items we discussed, these are the action items. Please sign and date.
When I had a roomate I had the room with the bathroom attached because I was the one that found the place and organized the entire moving process. We still paid equal rent.
When I had a roomate I had the room with the bathroom attached because I was the one that found the place and organized the entire moving process. We still paid equal rent.
We literally measured our rooms and mathed out the rent in my last college house but that's the nerdy way to do it
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
Unless all names are equal on the lease it just doesn't make sense to me to divide things up that way. In my experience the primary lease holder gets to pick the room without paying extra, and that has always been my expectation even when that person wasn't me, as long as I'm not relegated to storage closet.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Are they really likely to start stealing things over a rent dispute? This seems like two different problems.
I'd advocate for a lock either way. It's better to have boundaries. A lock on the door says, "No you can't borrow my shit without asking. "
Maybe among long time friends it's not necessary. For a set of roommates and a girlfriend who you don't know?
If you put a lock on your door and they act betrayed like it's an insult you don't trust them, that's a pretty good reason to not trust them. It's in everyone's best interest that their belongings are secured.
I'd rather have a 400 sqft studio than a roommate at this point in my life.
Edit: Think of it this way. If you rented a room from someone who owns a house, wouldn't you expect to be able to lock your door?
Unless all names are equal on the lease it just doesn't make sense to me to divide things up that way. In my experience the primary lease holder gets to pick the room without paying extra, and that has always been my expectation even when that person wasn't me, as long as I'm not relegated to storage closet.
100% this.
If you're the primary leaseholder and ultimately responsible for everything, there has to be a perk to the job.
I would have gone to the office right away when they were trying to move in the GF. Trying to sneak her in without informing them is a good way to get the lot of you tossed on the street. The first thing you probably should have done was let them know this was going on, and that if RM# 1 wanted his girl there so bad, then you can talk to them about her getting on the lease in some legal, professional way instead of putting things like your place of living/credit/hard-earned $ at risk. Or let her stay there for a couple of days until she can get back on her feet.
The master bed/bath and parking space are the benefits for being the one who put their grownup pants on and actually got the lease in their name, with all the associated risks, instead of being like your roommates who think it goes to the one who whines loudest enough.
First, go to the leasing office and let them know the situation, pronto. If they find it out through any other means, it's going to look bad on the lot of you- and you could pretty much write them off as a reference for if/when you need to move to another house/apartment, or they might even toss you out for violating the lease. Second, tell RM #1 either his girl goes on the lease legally, if the office allows it, or if not- too bad, she can stay a few days to line something else up, but after that, too bad. You're not heartless, but at the same time, you shouldn't be letting them take advantage. RM #2 can keep his old room- you don't get what you want simply by throwing $ at it. You're the one taking all the risk, you ought to have at least some benefits to doing that.
Are they really likely to start stealing things over a rent dispute? This seems like two different problems.
I'd advocate for a lock either way. It's better to have boundaries. A lock on the door says, "No you can't borrow my shit without asking. "
Maybe among long time friends it's not necessary. For a set of roommates and a girlfriend who you don't know?
If you put a lock on your door and they act betrayed like it's an insult you don't trust them, that's a pretty good reason to not trust them. It's in everyone's best interest that their belongings are secured.
I'd rather have a 400 sqft studio than a roommate at this point in my life.
Edit: Think of it this way. If you rented a room from someone who owns a house, wouldn't you expect to be able to lock your door?
I just want to say that, not always! Be sure to check your lease about this sort of thing. You cant just go installing locks around your place that you dont own. I'm not allowed to in my apartment whatsoever, management has a skeleton key and I would be in hot shit if they came to inspect the fire alarm in my room (something they do once a year) and they couldn't get into it. Do not just assume you have the right to do this without telling anyone. My lease explicitly says that if they have to break a lock I've installed that I would be in violation and I would be charged for the damage to the door.
They might not be likely to catch you if they dont do inspections, but it is something your roommates could easily report as a violation, if this starts coming down to those sorts of battles.
From 8 years of renting, 12, if you count the bumming around in colleges not actually on leases, I've seen far more splits based on the physical amenities than the legal ones. To be clear, I think that basing it on the legality of it all is perfectly reasonable, as an adult with logic, but I would not assume that a sub-30year old balking at it a bit would be an immediate indicator that any of these roommates are thieving monsters. We have a lot of shitty roommate threads and experiences as a collective forum, but its good to protect yourself while having a little empathy and not fanning an ember into flames if all parties are reasonable, even if naive and inexperienced.
Unless all names are equal on the lease it just doesn't make sense to me to divide things up that way. In my experience the primary lease holder gets to pick the room without paying extra, and that has always been my expectation even when that person wasn't me, as long as I'm not relegated to storage closet.
Yeah doing the work to find the place and more importantly, assuming responsibility for damages, damb right that merits first choice of room
The fact that the GF was moved in behind OP's back is troubling. The fact that the GF lurked in a bedroom while the conversation about her moving in was going on is a big red flag for me. This leads me to believe that she is not going to act like an adult, and anytime she has a problem, it's going to go to BF, and then to the other roommate before they all potentially gang up on OP. I wonder if it was her that thinks since she moved in that her and BF should get the master bedroom. This is all conjecture and I could be way off, but I have lived with numerous roommates, some fantastic, most were terrible. The WORST roommate is typically anyone NOT on the lease and has no responsibility for the unit.
OP, cover your butt, and I wish you the best possible luck.
“Think of me like Yoda, but instead of being little and green I wear suits and I'm awesome. I'm your bro—I'm Broda!”
Do you know why the SO found themselves suddenly in need of a living space? We had an SO move in with us briefly in college and it turned out she got thrown out of her last place for 'forgetting' to pay rent. Guess who continued to 'forget' to pay rent at our place.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Are they really likely to start stealing things over a rent dispute? This seems like two different problems.
I'd advocate for a lock either way. It's better to have boundaries. A lock on the door says, "No you can't borrow my shit without asking. "
Maybe among long time friends it's not necessary. For a set of roommates and a girlfriend who you don't know?
If you put a lock on your door and they act betrayed like it's an insult you don't trust them, that's a pretty good reason to not trust them. It's in everyone's best interest that their belongings are secured.
I'd rather have a 400 sqft studio than a roommate at this point in my life.
Edit: Think of it this way. If you rented a room from someone who owns a house, wouldn't you expect to be able to lock your door?
I just want to say that, not always! Be sure to check your lease about this sort of thing. You cant just go installing locks around your place that you dont own. I'm not allowed to in my apartment whatsoever, management has a skeleton key and I would be in hot shit if they came to inspect the fire alarm in my room (something they do once a year) and they couldn't get into it. Do not just assume you have the right to do this without telling anyone. My lease explicitly says that if they have to break a lock I've installed that I would be in violation and I would be charged for the damage to the door.
They might not be likely to catch you if they dont do inspections, but it is something your roommates could easily report as a violation, if this starts coming down to those sorts of battles.
From 8 years of renting, 12, if you count the bumming around in colleges not actually on leases, I've seen far more splits based on the physical amenities than the legal ones. To be clear, I think that basing it on the legality of it all is perfectly reasonable, as an adult with logic, but I would not assume that a sub-30year old balking at it a bit would be an immediate indicator that any of these roommates are thieving monsters. We have a lot of shitty roommate threads and experiences as a collective forum, but its good to protect yourself while having a little empathy and not fanning an ember into flames if all parties are reasonable, even if naive and inexperienced.
Adding a portable door lock may be reasonable, as that won't require the door to be modified. Depending on how your doors are will determine if it will support that, or if it will only support that if you are inside the room.
Posts
My state operates under a "one-party consent" law w.r.t. audio recordings, which I believe covers me as one of the conversational parties. If I'm misunderstanding that then I'll keep it in mind going forward - the goal is to start protecting myself just in case.
IIRC yea, if you're party to the conversation then recording it is fine. Note about that camera idea earlier, if you were just to leave an audio recording device on and leave that would be illegal. Security cams work on different things but I'd be really really hesitant to set one up anywhere in an apartment without everybody knowing. Your private locked room is the only maybe spot on that and I would talk to real lawyer about that.
Please please please PLEASE make sure you have renters insurance and then go through and take photos of any valuable things you have and then a few just wide shots of the things in your room that you own. You most likely will never need to reference the photos but just have them on hand in the off chance something bad happens either from this or even down the road.
It's so much better to take 15 minutes now and have peace of mind than it is to be scrambling after the fact and adding more stress to the burden.
Check into it to be sure. My state allows one party consent for phone calls but doing it in person without both party's consent is illegal.
I don't think it's a bad idea to protect yourself, you just don't want to run afoul of the law.
Another thing you can do, though it may feel weird, is send an email after a meeting like that with "here's what we talked about and decided, you're going to do X, I'm going to do Y, if anything I've written here is inaccurate let me know." Then you've memorialized the conversation for future reference.
I've never been in an apartment situation where the person with their own bathroom wasn't paying more for it. If they didn't realize it when they were getting into this lease, and then made this same sort of bid for apartment advice, the question from his angle is "I want to move my girlfriend in, but there's a guy already in the master! Do you think he'd switch with me if I told him we'll split the utilities 4 ways?". My immediate response would be "what about rent" and then I would be a little taken aback if that person then explained the guy was paying the same amount as he was for his smaller room.
Hopefully this doesn't come off as playing devils advocate, I just think its fairly likely that someone probably gave them damning advice about paying equal shares for their small rooms, as that is not generally how you set up a lease when there are obvious amenity advantages. Legally they are the ones in the wrong 100% and you should protect yourself, but if they haven't shown themselves to be horrible people up to this point, I would take that into consideration. I wouldn't go from 1 to nuclear in an extremely obvious way until they are very obviously not cooperating, personally.
Offer it up to all roommates and help them install it.
Just say it's to keep everyone honest and make sure everyone has a private space that's theirs.
It's only a big deal if someone is an asshole and is going to make it a big deal. "What do you think I'm going to steal something?" is something a person who was planning on pilfering stuff says, usually, in a shared living situation if it's not in a joking tone.
That kind of damning advice seems to have been exactly what happened here, at least with #2. What I explained to them last night was that the order of operations here looks way too sketchy for me to trust. If everything is fine for six months, and then within the space of twelve hours there's a new human being in the space AND sudden interest about rearranging the living situation, those two things are not going to be easy for me to dissociate.
The order of business needs to be for #1 to handle the illegal situation we've been put into FIRST (and within the business week) before we sit down and renegotiate the financial split. But as long as the former happens, the latter is not something that bothers me!
Offering to keep your rent the same means #2 saves 33% on their rent and the occupants of #1's room will bear a 33% increase in rent burden to reflect the 33% increase in total common-area usage (while not reflecting that their usage is doubling from the status quo).
That seems more than equitable for them, so I wouldn't even start there; but definitely don't accept paying more.
My experience here was many years ago, but people generally just paid an extra $100 for the master. IE: if your rent was 1200, you'd pay 1100/n + 100. 375 / 275 in a four way split.
My dorm room was next to the bathroom which was great if I needed to go, but less great when some chucklenuts flooded it.
As for the actual situation, it sounds like you're handling it very well.
Hey these are the items we discussed, these are the action items. Please sign and date.
Nice deal if you can get it.
I'd advocate for a lock either way. It's better to have boundaries. A lock on the door says, "No you can't borrow my shit without asking. "
Maybe among long time friends it's not necessary. For a set of roommates and a girlfriend who you don't know?
If you put a lock on your door and they act betrayed like it's an insult you don't trust them, that's a pretty good reason to not trust them. It's in everyone's best interest that their belongings are secured.
I'd rather have a 400 sqft studio than a roommate at this point in my life.
Edit: Think of it this way. If you rented a room from someone who owns a house, wouldn't you expect to be able to lock your door?
100% this.
If you're the primary leaseholder and ultimately responsible for everything, there has to be a perk to the job.
Why would anyone do it otherwise?
There's a bunch of these calculators online, too, and you can just estimate space or add the parking spot or whatever if you want to.
I think we used
https://www.splitwise.com/calculators/rent
to get an idea and then kinda free handed it
The master bed/bath and parking space are the benefits for being the one who put their grownup pants on and actually got the lease in their name, with all the associated risks, instead of being like your roommates who think it goes to the one who whines loudest enough.
First, go to the leasing office and let them know the situation, pronto. If they find it out through any other means, it's going to look bad on the lot of you- and you could pretty much write them off as a reference for if/when you need to move to another house/apartment, or they might even toss you out for violating the lease. Second, tell RM #1 either his girl goes on the lease legally, if the office allows it, or if not- too bad, she can stay a few days to line something else up, but after that, too bad. You're not heartless, but at the same time, you shouldn't be letting them take advantage. RM #2 can keep his old room- you don't get what you want simply by throwing $ at it. You're the one taking all the risk, you ought to have at least some benefits to doing that.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
I just want to say that, not always! Be sure to check your lease about this sort of thing. You cant just go installing locks around your place that you dont own. I'm not allowed to in my apartment whatsoever, management has a skeleton key and I would be in hot shit if they came to inspect the fire alarm in my room (something they do once a year) and they couldn't get into it. Do not just assume you have the right to do this without telling anyone. My lease explicitly says that if they have to break a lock I've installed that I would be in violation and I would be charged for the damage to the door.
They might not be likely to catch you if they dont do inspections, but it is something your roommates could easily report as a violation, if this starts coming down to those sorts of battles.
From 8 years of renting, 12, if you count the bumming around in colleges not actually on leases, I've seen far more splits based on the physical amenities than the legal ones. To be clear, I think that basing it on the legality of it all is perfectly reasonable, as an adult with logic, but I would not assume that a sub-30year old balking at it a bit would be an immediate indicator that any of these roommates are thieving monsters. We have a lot of shitty roommate threads and experiences as a collective forum, but its good to protect yourself while having a little empathy and not fanning an ember into flames if all parties are reasonable, even if naive and inexperienced.
Yeah doing the work to find the place and more importantly, assuming responsibility for damages, damb right that merits first choice of room
When I had roommates we also calculated the rent per square foot, and split the common areas equally.
OP, cover your butt, and I wish you the best possible luck.