Situation: Landlord owns a 3 bedroom townhome. Landlord has entered into 3 separate rental agreements, with 3 different tenants, each of whom rent one of the bedrooms with shared access to remaining common areas (kitchen, living room, garage, etc).

Landlord has stated that when one or more of the rented rooms is without tenant, (s)he has the right to use or assign usage of the open bedroom as (s)he see's fit, including overnight stays by landlord or landlord's assignee's.

Question: What are the rights of the landlord/tenants regarding to entry into and/or usage of both the unoccupied rooms and common area's in this type of rental situation?

excon

Hello wayne:

Wrong question. It sounds to me like the situation is illegal to begin with. Therefore, since there's no law on the subject, there are no rights by anyone.

If you're the tenant, I would vacate. It sounds like your landlord is trying to make her house into an apartment/hotel, and I don't think she can do that.

excon

waynedwilson2007

excon,

Thanks for your reply. I am not one of the tenents although I do know the parties involved.

I am intrigued by your observation that the entire situation may be illegal. Can you elaborate?

To provide more detail, you should know that the tenents are college students who agreed to share the townhome, each having a seperate rental agreement with the landlord. To my knowledge, there is nothing illegal about this, but I am open to correction.

The problem arose during summer break when one of the students left and the room became vacant. Landlord had a family member visiting the area and suggested that the vacant room could be used temporarily. I disagreed.

My position is that, at minimum, the decision to have else someone using the open room (regardless of the length of time) must include the current tenants. I base my opinion, first of all, on the fact that acceptance of new roomates has in the past been a mutual, though unwritten, agreement amongst all parties. Secondly, regardless of the individual rental agreements, each tenant possesses shared rights to use of the common areas, which implies a stake in who else can/should be there.

Landlord disagreed stating that tenants are not renting the house, they are renting rooms.

Frankly, I agree with you that landlord is attempting use this as a hotel room, at least temporarily. This in itself raises issues, but you suggest that this type of shared rental may not be legal in the first place. Can you be more specific?

excon

Hello again, wayne:

She's one or the other and she can't go back and forth. She's either an hotelier or a residential landlord. She can't have it both ways.

Therefore, any agreement that says she can is invalid under state law.

The only material difference this makes to the long term tenants is that they can move. They can't force her to comply. They can't make her a better landlord. Oh, I guess they can snitch her off to the Attorney General, but that's not gonna help with sleeping arrangements.

excon

waynedwilson2007

OK, excon. I get it. Basically, landlord is bound by residential landlord law. Despite the open room, landlord cannot enter or otherwise intrude on the other tenants except for emergency or with applicable prior notice. Correct?

froggy7

I'm not sure I agree with excon on this one. Leaving aside whether it is legal to rent out rooms in this manner, since three people have apparently not had an issue with it up to now, the situation is that the landlord is renting out per room. Which means that he could, technically, rent each room for a different amount of time (say 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year). If he did so, would the other renters have any input on him rerenting the vacant room to a new tenant? I'd say no, no more than someone in a duplex has any say in who the landlord rents the other half of the duplex to.

Now, it may be illegal to rent by the room, but if the tenants start going down that road to stop the landlord from moving someone new in, the most likely result is that they will find themselves homeless.