All Forum Posts by: Eugene Khoruzhenko

Looking deeper at local regulations in Seattle, I found the following:

• The landlord may not require an added family member to sign as a party to the rental agreement.
• The landlord must offer the same terms of tenancy to the added family member if the original tenant vacates before the end of the term – even if they do not meet screening criteria

This looks like an original tenant can bring in anyone with all kinds of screening problems, then vacate, and I end up with the other person who I would never accept otherwise... Exactly the answer I was looking for!

@Kar Sun, I did see their marriage certificate - are you saying that we cannot call the 2-nd person "guest" in the addendum? Does marriage automatically make the 2nd person equal tenant? The 1st person barely qualified, if I run them now as couple I am pretty sure that they will drop way below the acceptance criteria. I really wouldn't like their marriage and status change to become a reason for losing a place to live, especially that now they won't qualify as couple for most other landlords, and nothing bad happened yet. We know that the 1st person is working and adding a 2nd person is not a substantial extra financial burden, so it seems it can work. What we are afraid of is that they break-up, 1st person quits, and we end up with the 2nd person as legal tenant, who we know will not pay. Are there any other dangerous turn-outs to be aware of and how to protect against?

• Thanks to everyone for valuable advice, really appreciated! Let me add the info I missed - the property is located in WA state, and of course I would like to keep the main tenant or actually both and give them a chance for a fresh start together. Even if the law in our state allows declining a spouse with adverse action, I would not use it, in this case it seems unreasonable to ruin the opportunity for these folks, we only want to protect ourselves if the situation changes. So based on the suggestions, we would conditionally approve the second person's application with a Lease Amendment to add them as "longer-term guest", for 3 months to start with, with a clause that if the main tenant leaves, the guest must vacate immediately. Then if all goes well, we'll renew the addendum for another period. And require adding the guest to the renters insurance policy - great suggestions @Andrea Glasco!
• I understand the reason behind making them both equally responsible tenants, but as is, the second person already has debt and active collections and no job, the additional financial responsibility would probably not mean much. Therefore it would make a good sense to not accept that person as "tenant" to begin with, and leave them as "guest" for the time being. I am no legal expert, but it seems to me that in case we end up in trouble directly with the second person - we never had them as "tenant" bound with the lease agreement. Not sure if such determination would have any legal standing though... Appreciate the law-savvy folks to comment.

I lease out individual rooms in a rental house. One tenant got married and wants to add spouse to the lease. The main tenant is okay - pays rent on time, agreed to pay extra for the other person, all looks good and the lease is for almost another year. However, screening of the spouse revealed debt, collections, no source of income, etc. - I would never accept that person alone. The main tenant now demands that we accept the spouse because they cannot live without each other, and will be totally responsible for the other person and full rent payments. On one hand, it is okay with us as long as we receive the monthly payments. On the other hand, I have a feeling that something may go wrong. Does anyone have a similar experience, what can go wrong? Normally I would add both on the lease agreement equally responsible for it, but in this case can I specify that the original tenant is the primary tenant responsible for all financial side of the agreement? What if they break-up and the primary tenant decides to leave, does it mean that the sub-tenant must vacate as well? Can the sub-tenant claim that they will stay and the primary tenant must keep paying as per the agreement? Are there any standard addendums or separate agreements that cover couples?

What if I have several applicants for the same property? They submit their background/credit check applications at different times and I receive the results out of order. Can I select the applicant with best credit/income scores, willing to lease for longer period, etc. business factors? Or it must be in an order the applications are received? Or I have to pre-select only one applicant to go through application process? If their check scores are low, I would not want to lose the other applicants - not sure what the right process is. Thanks