5 Things You Must Remember About Subletting

By Francine Fluetsch on December 22, 2015

Subletting your apartment usually comes about at a stressful time: You are taking finals and getting ready to move back home for summer, or maybe you are getting ready to study abroad.

Whatever the situation, there are many things you have to keep in mind when you are about to sublet, so many in fact, that it’s easy to forget about certain aspects. Here are some things that you really don’t want to forget before you sublet!

1. Take all personal belongings.

The great thing about subletting is that you can leave your big furniture and your winter clothes behind, since you’ll be going back in the fall. While it’s nice to leave things so you don’t have as much to pack up, make sure to take all important personal belongings with you. Someone else is going to be staying in your room, and if there are things that you don’t want them to touch or accidentally break, you want to make sure that it is coming with you on the plane or in the car.

Take a good sweep of your room and mark items that can stay, and ones that you need to take home. This will make you feel much better about someone staying in your place, and will still allow you to leave some of your items behind so you have less to take.

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2. Leave them some closet space.

While you want to leave clothes behind that you aren’t going to need during the summer, you still want to make sure that the subtenant will have some closet space to put their clothes in, since they will probably be staying in your place for at least two months. When they come over to grab the key from you, you can show them exactly what drawers and other storage spaces you have made available for them, so they will feel comfortable unpacking and won’t feel like they are invading your space.

3. Provide contact info.

While I’m assuming that the subtenant already has your info since you had to be in contact to make the subletting deal, make sure that you also supply them with the information of your roommates and your landlord. This way, if anything goes wrong and they can’t contact you, they will have multiple options of who to call to know how to fix the situation.

Your landlord should already know that the subtenant will be staying in your place, so having them in contact will be a good idea so you don’t have to go running to your place during the summer, especially if you live far away from school.

4. Give them the run down.

When does your trash man come? What about the gardener? Will they have to get the mail from you? And when will the rent be due? The best thing to do would be to type up all the logistics of the place and email it to them as well as supplying them with a hard copy, so they will always have it on hand. This will also protect you in case they say you didn’t tell them when to send the rent, because the email you sent will have a date on it and give them and your landlord proof of what was sent. Better safe than sorry, right? Compile this list with your roommates to make sure that you didn’t miss anything.

Remember to have the day they need to move out on there as well! I have heard from multiple people who have subletted that this can sometimes be a point of issue, where the subtenant thought they would be able to stay longer than the renter wanted them to. You need to make sure that you tell them this and bold it on the document that you give them, so they know exactly when they will have to have everything moved out by.

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5. Clean.

In the stress of everything, deep cleaning might be the last thing on your mind, but you really want to try and make the space spotless as a courtesy to your subtenant, and also so they know exactly how you want the place to look when they leave and you move back in. Make sure you are stocked up on cleaning supplies and they know where everything is. It will save you a lot of trouble in the long run, since your place won’t get grimy beyond help.

These are just a few things to keep in mind before you let your subtenant in and leave them to their own devices. The person you are subletting to is hopefully going to take care of your place, but anything you can do to ensure that that happens would be a good idea to squeeze in before you leave, though I know it’s during a stressful time. If you know everything you need to do beforehand, you can split up the work with your roommates and make sure that everything gets done. Good luck!

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