Landlord Question and Answer Forum

I am renting a 4 bedroom home out in Florida with 4 tenants, 1 tenant moved out. Know they have found someone to take the others place. The kicker is, the new tenant is not part of the original family, so they want the new tenant to pay them for the room. I don't have a problem with that, but how do I set it up legally? Do I do a new lease? I don't know how to set it up.

For one, you have not mentioned if you rented to four people independently or not but I will assume you mean one lease with four people on the lease collectively. I don't think I would ever do that because of the potential complications and nightmares of the blame game. If you have knowledge of their subleasing and fail to require an application and updated lease or renewed lease for the new occupant you are setting yourself up for more problems later because you were aware and did nothing regarding the lease. You are effectively letting the tenants become a landlord with renting rights. This could duplicate over and over again until you don't have a lease for anyone living there. Then you want to evict when you have nothing showing you rented to them. You need to put your foot down before it gets out of control. You need to add the new person to the lease period or don't renew the lease when it comes due and get out of this mess.

Posted by Darlene D, AZ on Sunday, June 3, 2018