Enrichment · Life Skills

Agree on the rent and
the dishes before move-in.

Choose how you will split rent, bills and groceries, and settle quiet hours, guests, borrowing and chores. The builder works out each person’s rent to the cent, rotates the chores week by week and writes it all up as a short agreement everyone signs.

Write our agreementWhat you get
$5one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $5

Included with the Caveat Academy pass and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Life skills kit, $29 for 28 items.

The agreement builder

The worked example is made up: three roommates sharing a $2,250 apartment and splitting rent by room size. Switch to Residence hall room for a dorm, where rent and the deposit drop out. Nothing you enter leaves this browser.

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What you get

Enrichment · Life SkillsAlso for College · College Success$5

What you finish with
A one-page roommate agreement in numbered, plain-language clauses covering rent, utilities, groceries, quiet hours, guests, cleaning, borrowing, the deposit, moving out and disagreements; each person’s rent to the cent; a dated weekly chore rotation; and signature lines. It prints to sign, copies as text and the rotation downloads as a spreadsheet.
Who it is for
Students moving into a first apartment or a shared residence hall room, young adults sharing a rental, and the families helping them set it up.
Format
Browser tool. Works on a phone, tablet or computer; the agreement rewrites itself as you choose. Two to six roommates and up to ten chores. Prints to sign; copies as text; downloads the chore rotation (.csv); export and import a file.
Access
$5 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with the Caveat Academy pass and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Life skills kit ($29) and the Enrichment Suite pass ($119), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The Life Skills space in Caveat Enrichment; also listed for College Success (first-year students sharing a residence hall room).
Support
Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. Choose apartment or residence hall room, and add the address and each roommate.
  2. Set the rent and how to split it: equally, by room size with shared space split evenly, or by set percents.
  3. Settle utilities, groceries, quiet hours, guests, borrowing, the deposit and the move-out notice.
  4. List the chores to rotate and how many weeks of rotation to print.
  5. Read the agreement together, change anything someone will not sign, then print it and sign it.

Write our agreement

How the shares and the rotation are worked out

Rent in proportion to space, to the cent; chores that move one person down each week.

1 Each person’s spaceShared space each173.3 sq ft520 ÷ 3Priya333.3 sq ft160 + 173.3Luis and Kai303.3 sq ft130 + 173.3 each2 Rent in proportion, to the centPriya$797.87$2,250 × 333.3 ÷ 940Luis$726.06$2,250 × 303.3 ÷ 940Kai$726.07the extra cent, so it adds up3 Chores rotate every weekChore 1 goes to person 1, then moves down one each weekKitchen: Priya, Luis, Kai, Priyaevery chore reaches every person; four chores, three people, four weeks1 SpaceShared each173.3 sq ft520 ÷ 3Priya333.3 sq ft160 + 173.3Luis and Kai303.3 sq ft each130 + 173.32 RentPriya$797.87333.3 of 940Luis, Kai$726.06Kai +1 cent3 ChoresRotate weeklyKitchen: Priya, Luis, Kaievery chore reaches everyone
The worked example: $2,250 rent split by room size with the 520 square feet of shared space split evenly: $797.87, $726.06 and $726.07.

The arithmetic

By room size, each person’s space is their room plus an equal share of the shared space, and rent is split in proportion to it. By percents, each share is the rent times the percent; equally, the rent divided by the number of people. Shares are worked out in cents and rounded, and the last person carries any leftover cent so the shares add up to the rent exactly. In the rotation, chore one starts with person one and every chore moves to the next person each week.

What the agreement can and cannot do

A roommate agreement is a promise between the people who live together. It does not change the lease with the landlord: when everyone signs one lease, each tenant can usually be held responsible for the whole rent and for damage, whatever the roommates agreed between themselves. Read the lease first. In a residence hall, the housing contract and the hall’s rules come first, and many halls have their own roommate agreement form to fill in with your resident assistant.

Sources

  1. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, hud.gov. Tenant rights, laws and protections, with links to each state’s landlord and tenant information.
  2. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Joint and several liability (Wex legal encyclopedia).
  3. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Lease and Security deposit (Wex legal encyclopedia): what a lease binds and how deposits work in general terms.
  4. National Association for Community Mediation (nafcm.org): community mediation services for disputes between neighbors and housemates.

The worked example is made up. The page assembles an agreement from the choices you make; it is not legal advice and does not change a lease or housing contract. Everything stays in this browser. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.