Read the fine print
You’d think I knew better …
We’d been warned about college kids being ABSOLUTELY CONTENT with the roommates they choose when deciding to live off campus. We’d been warned about having to rescue a kid from a rental agreement they needed to get out of. Yeah, we’d been warned.
I’ve been a paralegal for 28 years, I know how to read a contract. I even worked at an apartment building as a rental agent for awhile. When you have your kiddo saying “Quick mom! They need my answer now!” You throw all caution to the wind, figure the agreement can’t be much different than others you’ve read in the past, and you sign it. You’ve met the girls who she’ll be living with. How bad could they be? They’re actively involved in the local church youth group, they come from good families, they are excited my kid is sharing space with them.
We’d be warned … and then after only one quarter the kid is seriously unhappy. Without going into detail about what went wrong, we needed to get her into a new situation as soon as possible.
Our kiddo is blessed in her group of old friends. A series of mishaps in timing led to 2 of her really good friends living in alternate locations at the start of the year. Fate led them back together when each of them were looking for new digs within the next 6 months. So they started looking together, and found themselves a lovely little place with 4 bedrooms, leaving room for another new friend who was also looking for a place to move. Only our kid had trouble getting our of her lease.
In reading the parent Facebook groups for the university, I saw parents looking for lease-takeovers all the time. Seemed like a pretty normal undertaking. So I started reviewing our rental agreement, which to my great disappointment, included a “Roommate Approval” clause. All roommates had to approve both the roommate moving out and the roommate moving in. Sounds reasonable right? Only, now we were looking at a group of girls who could, essentially, block our kid from moving at all, or even worse, making us pay for the remainder of the lease. The only alternative would be to pay out the rest of the 9 months we had left on the lease and move her into her new place. Essentially paying double the rent.
My communication with the rental company confirmed my fears, so we started asking the roommates if they had anyone they were willing to move into our lease. Thankfully, a replacement was found, but not until after we agreed to pay her first months rent and had to offer to pay her damage deposit. In the meantime, we had to forfeit our damage deposit and first months rent. So in total, we were out approximately $1300 just to get out of the lease. Not to mention having to pay an additional damage deposit and first/last on the new place. And yep … we’d been warned.
Now that we’re all moved into the new place and paid every last penny (including the last much higher energy bill because one roommate resided there the entire month of December with a Christmas tree when the energy bill should have been less with all students returning home for the 4 week winter break) our kid is GLORIOUSLY happy and settled with the people she should have been living with all along. But, this was a learning opportunity for her and for us! I think it needed to happen. We learned our lesson.
So now, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
If you’ve got a kid in college now or in the future, please heed our advice:
Off-campus housing is MUCH cheaper, but comes with its own troubles;
READ every word of the rental agreement and review it with your kid so they know what’s at stake;
If you know or have the opportunity to meet the parents, DO;
Know that too many rules is just that - TOO many rules;
Don’t rush into anything; and
Understand that this may happen to you and your kid, and that’s okay.
Our daughter is smiling and happy. In fact, I may have never seen her so happy which makes all the stress of the last 2 months so worth it. They’ve got enough to worry about right? Grades, friends, tests, student loans, living on their own, laundry … I mean really. If the worst thing that can be said about me is that I rescued my daughter from a difficult living situation, then fine. Guilty as charged. But trust me, this new lease is right on the money and I felt comfortable signing this one. (Even found some mistakes they needed to correct.)
So as my mom would say … happy days are here again.