First, work out each person’s legal status
Your rights in a share house come from your legal status, not from what you call each other. There are three common positions:
- Co-tenants. Everyone’s name is on the tenancy agreement with the landlord. You share the obligations, and you are jointly and severally liable, which means the landlord can pursue any one of you for the whole of a debt, not just your share of it.
- Head tenant and sub-tenant. One person is on the lease, lives there, and sub-lets part of the place to someone else under a separate written agreement. The head tenant is effectively the sub-tenant’s landlord. This normally needs the landlord’s written permission.
- Boarders and lodgers. People who pay to live somewhere without exclusive occupation, typically renting a room from a live-in owner or tenant. In most states they sit outside the Residential Tenancies Act altogether.
That last one is why a written agreement matters so much in a share house. When tenancy law does not cover the arrangement, the agreement between you is very close to all there is. The classification is not always obvious either, and tribunals have found that people who thought they were lodgers were actually tenants, so getting the arrangement in writing helps everyone understand which one they are in.
What to put in it
Cover the things that cause arguments, which are rarely the dramatic ones:
- Money. What each person pays, when, and to whom. Whether rent is split evenly or by room size.
- Bond. How much each person put in, whose name it sits under, and what happens to it when they leave.
- Bills. Electricity, gas, water, internet: whose name each account is in, how they are split, and when they are settled up.
- Leaving. How much notice to give, who finds the replacement, and who the replacement has to be approved by.
- The house itself. Cleaning, common areas, guests staying over, parties, noise, pets, smoking, parking.
- Damage. Who pays when something breaks, and what counts as fair wear and tear.
- Furniture. Who owns what, so there is no argument when someone moves out.
Write it in plain language. A flatmate agreement that reads like a lease gets skimmed, and an agreement nobody read is worth very little however many signatures are on it.
If you are taking a bond from a flatmate
Be careful here. Bond rules can still apply even when the rest of tenancy law does not, and they differ by state: Queensland, for instance, brings boarders and lodgers inside the rules for bond payments specifically. Check your state’s tenancy authority before you hold someone’s money, because the obligation to lodge a bond does not disappear just because the arrangement is informal.
Signing it
A flatmate agreement is a private contract. There is no government form, no witness and no lodgement. Under the Electronic Transactions Acts an electronic signature stands as a signature where the method identifies the person, shows they meant to sign, is reliable for the purpose, and everyone consented to signing that way.
In Refrendo that looks like: upload the agreement as a PDF, add each housemate by name and email, place a signature and date field for each of them, and send. They get an email, open it on their phone, read it and sign. You see who has signed and who hasn’t, and Refrendo sends reminders to anyone who has not signed yet.
Keep the copy
When the last person signs, everyone is emailed a link to download the completed PDF and a certificate listing who signed, when, how each of them was identified, and fingerprints of the document before and after. The link works for seven days, so each of you should download both. Every housemate gets a copy, not only whoever sent it.