I have applicants that wish to rent one of my units, their parents/in laws will be living with them for 2-3 months.  Parents have visa and are not United States citizens because of this the applicants are requesting parents do not go on lease because it can somehow affect their parents ability to return to United States.  They are upfront about this and do not appear to be trying to hide anything but it is a scenario I am not familiar with.  Has anyone dealt with something similar and how did you protect yourself?  Applicants seem great, I would like to have them.

What if parents choose to stay longer than 2-3 months and the applicant is just put their name on the lease for them? What if they stop paying the rent and you have to evict the parents? I would want every adult 18 or over named on the lease so that I could have a lease the binds all of those adults to the terms of the lease including rules, terms etc... asking to leave them off the lease is asking them to be exempt from your lease terms as well which doesn't protect you that much... Further, those applicants can seem great, but you can't screen them since they aren't going to be on the lease so how do you know they are great after all or don't have priors? just asking questions that might give you perspective...

Bunch of BS. Not on the lease can’t live there. Nothing will happen to parents if they go in the lease.

@Shawn M. It sounds like you may be getting yourself involved in a legal place you probably want to avoid. I would pass on these tenants if they dont want to abide by your screening process

Hi Shawn,

It's probably not intelligent to collude with anyone to break Homeland Security laws.

Just my 2 cents.

Good Luck!

@Alex S. most likely the case, from the research I have done it would take an extreme scenario for names on the lease to affect visa.  

Exactly, if it sounds fishy it probably is.

@Jason D. Thanks for the response.  It sounds like the only safe solution to this is putting everyone 18+ on the lease, assuming that is what I require (which in all likelihood will be the case) do you think there is still a legal issue in the making?

@Shawn M. Putting everyone over 18 on the lease is good practice. I dont know immigration law, so I dont know if there is anything to worry about.

The conversation sounded like they were trying to hide something from someone that you dont want to hide things from

Why not write them on the lease as guests for the 3 month period that they are there?

Originally posted by @Shawn M.:

I have applicants that wish to rent one of my units, their parents/in laws will be living with them for 2-3 months.  Parents have visa and are not United States citizens because of this the applicants are requesting parents do not go on lease because it can somehow affect their parents ability to return to United States.  They are upfront about this and do not appear to be trying to hide anything but it is a scenario I am not familiar with.  Has anyone dealt with something similar and how did you protect yourself?  Applicants seem great, I would like to have them.

The person who signs the lease is going to be the one financially responsible. If the parents pass your criteria individually (IE they make enough, good credit, etc), then you can write in other people as "authorized occupants". They are likely being cautious because of the extremely difficult immigration process they are going through which is completely unforgiving of any innocent mistakes.

A person being on the lease makes no difference in your ability to legally evict them (think squatters). For me its just important that they are honest about who is living in the unit, so that I can review everyone's background/eviction history as long as the one(s) signing the lease have a solid enough financial profile for me to have recourse in the event of nonpayment.

Its similar to what I do for students - the parents sign as "guarantors" on the lease, ie they are guaranteeing the financial end, meaning the actual occupant just has to pass the background portion.

My standard answer to this is "anyone 18 or older living in the apartment needs to fill out an application and will be on the lease". If they really want the apartment they will comply, if not just move on. 

@Matthew Olszak  I completely agree. I believe from background check, proof of income, and over all appearance the applicants are being catiouse and do not want to jeopardize their parents visa. Great response, thank you. 

I always have anyone over 18 to be required to be on the lease.  With that said, if someone had a "guest" stay over for 2-3 months it is possible I wouldn't even know.

So, my first reaction is different in your situation than the several other folks.  (Note: I certainly wouldn't knowingly break any laws. That could go both ways in your case though.  Could you get into trouble by scheming related to their Visa or could you get into trouble by denying them based on familial status?  Those are opposite sides of the coin in your case.) 

If these applicants are actually "great" in every other way and qualify to rent on their own, and have been up front about their parents staying w/them a while, I think I would let it go.  I haven't had this situation before.  So I might get advice from others before deciding for sure but my first reaction is that all I would be missing by not putting the parents on the lease is the potential to collect from them if the lease is broken or there is damage, etc., and I think the sort of person who would break the lease or cause damage in this case could simply leave the country in which case I'm pretty sure I'd never collect.  I think the "Professional Tenant" would not have bothered to mention the parent situation.

A prospective tenant who is "great" and has connections with family or friends feels stable to me.  Knowing only what you've told us, I'd rent to them if it was one of my properties.

I had a similar situation some years back, says their parents from India will visit for a few months. Never got into the details, and won't in the future as it will be all lies. On my lease I charge extra for visitors, back then around $50 to $100/month each.  They have to register their names with me, but not on the lease. They moved in.

Two years later they were still there and their excuse for late rent was the father who's visiting from India was injured in a job accident as a elevator operator, has trouble with workman's comp. The mom was also a pain complaining about creaky hinges.

Foreigner visitor non citizens collecting workman's comp? Overstay their visa? Will Trump look into it?

This is common with Indian tenants that when they rent, I ask about visitors and my extra charge for long term visitors is due to this which I explained to them. I don't charge visitors the first two weeks. If only two weeks, they ARE visitors. I tell them I don't care for long term visitors.

@Shawn M. I had a similar issue with holdover tenants. The wife was the only person on the old lease. I told them that on the new lease, both needed to be on the lease. They said what your tenant said, that having him on the lease would affect his visa application. After much wrangling back and forth, we compromised by having his wife as the signatory on the lease but including the husband under “other occupants,” along with their children, and mother-in-law who visited 2 weeks every year.

Not sure how legal this was, or how effective that would be in case they stopped paying, but I was planning to rehab the property a year later, so it was really a stop gap measure.

Plenty of advice, all of it does nothing to remove underlying risk. Unless you are extremely desperate your only logical decision is to reject these applicants.

It is never logical for a landlord to have to work at trying to make applicants acceptable. The purpose of screening is to identify and reduce/avoid risk. Why would any landlord try to find ways to accept known risks. Reject these applicants.

I have plenty of friends whose parents visiting for extended time (usually 3-4 weeks). The parents are not citizens as well and on their application for visa they always mention the children's address where they are staying. I've never heard any problems with landlords charging extra for visiting parents.

Unless I understood it wrong and the place is rented only for parents to stay?

These parents don't have any job in the USA and are not qualified to be Tenants anyway. So, your Tenants in the lease are their kids .......why do you want the parents on the lease? Do you pay utilities (water/sewer) or Tenants do?

If your tenants are responsible for the lease and they are qualified, why the question of their parents being on the lease even raised?

@Shawn M.

We do often get immigrant tenants whose parents visit and stay for about 4-5 months. We usually allow this if the tenants qualify otherwise. Putting them on the lease could we tricky since many cities have specific rules in addition to immigration laws about renting to noncitizen/nonimmigrant individuals.

We have occupants who have a visiting parent for a month/6 weeks, we just ask the tenant let us know. In your situation i would list as other occupants, you can evict joe and all occupants if they are listed or not. That said I wouldnt do this with borderline tenants.

Anyone over the age of 18 who plans to reside on the property should be on the lease, no questions asked. It is one thing to say "I'm having family from out of town come in for a weekend". It is another thing to have them living there for 2 - 3 months and then not have them on the lease.

I understand the applicants seem like upstanding individuals, and this is a unique situation, but always keep yourself protected; in this instance, just seems like you'd be assuming an awful lot of risk and I'm not 100% sure that what the tenants are trying to do doesn't violate HSL. Anywho, that's my 2 cents! Best of luck to you!

Originally posted by @Matthew Olszak :

Originally posted by @Shawn M.:

I have applicants that wish to rent one of my units, their parents/in laws will be living with them for 2-3 months.  Parents have visa and are not United States citizens because of this the applicants are requesting parents do not go on lease because it can somehow affect their parents ability to return to United States.  They are upfront about this and do not appear to be trying to hide anything but it is a scenario I am not familiar with.  Has anyone dealt with something similar and how did you protect yourself?  Applicants seem great, I would like to have them.

The person who signs the lease is going to be the one financially responsible. If the parents pass your criteria individually (IE they make enough, good credit, etc), then you can write in other people as "authorized occupants". They are likely being cautious because of the extremely difficult immigration process they are going through which is completely unforgiving of any innocent mistakes.

A person being on the lease makes no difference in your ability to legally evict them (think squatters). For me its just important that they are honest about who is living in the unit, so that I can review everyone's background/eviction history as long as the one(s) signing the lease have a solid enough financial profile for me to have recourse in the event of nonpayment.

Its similar to what I do for students - the parents sign as "guarantors" on the lease, ie they are guaranteeing the financial end, meaning the actual occupant just has to pass the background portion.

 This is what we do. We sometimes have one person as the "lessee" and the others as "authorized occupants". We name all people on our lease, including children, that will be living at the property, where living is defined as staying for a period of more than 2 weeks total during the lease agreement. We run background & credits on all adults living in the property. We don't run into this with parents like your situation but do run into it frequently with college students & their parents. 

@Shawn M. it is true that if they have a visitors visa, they may not be allowed to stay for the lease term. That being said, it is not like you are sharing lease documents with ICE or Homeland Security. They would most likely never even see that document. It could be honest people who are trying to be very cautious of the law. Or it could be people who are trying to evade detection. 

I have several friends whose parents are from out of the country and it is very common for them to come visit for 1-2 months at a time. Traveling long distances is expensive and long stays are common, especially with parents. 

I would just put a clause in the lease that the parents are allowed to stay for up to three months at a time.

Thanks everyone.  Lots to read, great points for and against.