He's going into third year. Hostel food is bad, and four of them have found a 2BHK close to campus. I'm not against it. What I don't know: whose name goes on the rental agreement, how the deposit gets split if one boy drops out halfway, and whether I should be speaking to the other parents at all or leaving it to them. Has anyone done this?
Talk to the other parents, definitely. When I moved from hostel to a flat in my own college days, only one friend's father bothered to, and he was the one who got our deposit back from the landlord. The rest of us just complained.
Also make sure at least one name on the agreement belongs to someone who will answer the phone. With four boys, the landlord's calls go to whoever has the most charge left.
Our son moved out of his hostel in second year. We co-signed as guarantor, so did the other three families, and we wrote the deposit split and notice period on a single page that everyone signed. It felt excessive at the time. Six months later one boy left for an internship and that page saved a long argument. The trade-off is that you're now part of his landlord situation, which he didn't love.
A single page, that sounds doable. Did all four families sign it, or only the boys?
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