Free New York Roommate Agreement

A roommate agreement is a contract between the roommates. The landlord is not a party to it and it does not change the lease. New York is the one state in this family where a statute gives the tenant an affirmative right to share the apartment in the first place. RPL § 235-f makes it unlawful for a landlord to restrict occupancy to the tenant named in the lease, sets out what happens for a lease naming one tenant and for a lease naming two or more, imposes a notice duty, limits what the occupant acquires, and voids any attempt to waive it. Nine subdivisions in total, and it is worth getting their numbers right because they are widely misreported.

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a clean, dated PDF that every roommate can sign and keep a copy of. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

Watch: Free New York Roommate Agreement explained

▶ Watch overview

A roommate agreement records what the people sharing an apartment have agreed between themselves: rooms, rent shares, the deposit, shared costs, guests and what happens when someone leaves. It binds them to each other, not the landlord. Everyone named on the lease remains liable to the landlord for the whole rent where the lease makes that liability joint and several — and no New York statute creates or displaces it: the phrase returns zero results across article 7 of the Real Property Law and article 7 title 1 of the General Obligations Law. In New York the agreement matters more than usual, because § 235-f gives an occupant a right to move in while expressly giving them nothing afterwards.

• Whether the lease names one tenant or two or more
• Who is a tenant on the lease and who is an occupant under § 235-f
• That the landlord was told the occupant’s name within the thirty-day period
• Each roommate’s share of the rent, and who pays the landlord
• Who paid what towards the deposit — it remains the money of the person who paid it
• The notice an occupant is entitled to before having to leave
• What happens to the occupant if the named tenant gives up the lease
• Guests, quiet hours, smoking, pets and cleaning
• Who finds and approves a replacement, and what the landlord requires
• That the agreement binds the roommates only and does not bind the landlord

• Citing the wrong subdivision. The head-count proviso is subdivision 4, the notice duty is subdivision 5, and the anti-waiver rule is subdivision 7. Many summaries are one out.
• Assuming an occupant gains security by living there. Subdivision 6 gives them no right of continued occupancy and no tenancy rights.
• Signing a lease clause barring roommates. Subdivision 7 makes a waiver null and void as against public policy.
• Skipping the thirty-day notice. Subdivision 5 requires the tenant to inform the landlord of the occupant’s name.
• Assuming a victim’s departure lowers everyone’s rent. RPL § 227-c releases the tenant terminating the lease; it does not reduce the co-tenants’ liability.

Real Property Law § 235-f begins from a prohibition. It is unlawful for a landlord to restrict occupancy of residential premises to the tenant or tenants named in the lease, or to those tenants and their immediate family. That is subdivision 2 — it bars both forms of restriction — and everything else in the section works out what follows from it.

Where the lease names one tenant, subdivision 3 permits that tenant to share the apartment with immediate family, with one additional occupant, and with the occupant’s dependent children. Where the lease names two or more tenants, subdivision 4 applies, and the proviso that limits the head count sits there. It is easy to misread, so read it slowly: the total of tenants and occupants together — excluding occupants’ dependent children — may not exceed the number of tenants specified in the current lease. That is a swap rather than an addition. A lease with two names supports two heads, so one roommate may take the place of a departing co-tenant, but two named co-tenants may not each bring in an additional occupant.

Both subdivision 3 and subdivision 4 carry a further condition that is routinely dropped: the right depends on the tenant, or the tenant’s spouse, occupying the premises as a primary residence.

Subdivision 5 imposes the notice duty. The tenant must inform the landlord of the name of any occupant within thirty days of the occupant moving in, or within thirty days of a request from the landlord. It is a light obligation and it is worth complying with, because it is the cheapest way to keep the arrangement uncontroversial.

Subdivision 7 is the provision that gives the section its force: any waiver is null and void as against public policy. A lease clause saying “no roommates” does not do what it appears to do. Subdivision 9 backs that up with a private right of action.

Two boundaries are worth stating. Subdivision 8 preserves occupancy codes, so the section does not override the limits discussed below. And the section reaches residential rental premises generally — searching its text for the usual carve-outs returns nothing: no exclusion for owner-occupied buildings, two-family houses, co-operatives, condominiums or public housing. That is a genuine contrast with RPL § 226-b, which does carry an exclusion of that kind.

Subdivision 6 is short and consequential: absent the landlord’s express written permission, an occupant acquires no right of continued occupancy if the tenant vacates, and no other rights of tenancy. The statutory right runs to the tenant — it is the tenant’s right to share their home — and the occupant is the beneficiary of it rather than the holder of it.

In practice this means an occupant can be asked to leave by the tenant, has no independent standing against the landlord, and loses their position entirely if the tenant gives up the lease. None of that is a defect in the section; it simply describes what the section is for. But it does mean that everything an occupant might reasonably want — a period of notice, the return of money they contributed, a say in who else moves in — has to come from an agreement with the tenant. That is what this document is.

Section 235-f(8) preserves occupancy codes rather than setting a number, so the limits come from elsewhere. The Multiple Dwelling Law is the main source. MDL § 31(6) provides that, except in class B dwellings and dormitories, no room shall be occupied for sleeping purposes by more than two adults, and MDL § 4(5) uses a limit of not more than four boarders, roomers or lodgers. The Multiple Dwelling Law applies in cities of 325,000 or more, and elsewhere by local adoption — so whether it reaches your building is the first question.

In New York City there is a further, more specific rule. NYC Administrative Code § 27-2075 works from livable floor area divided by eighty square feet, and it allows the owner to demand an affidavit stating who occupies the unit.

Outside the Multiple Dwelling Law’s reach, this page does not state a statewide occupancy figure, because none could be verified from a state source. If a number matters to your situation, it will come from the building code as it applies locally.

New York says something about deposits that most states do not, and it is directly useful to roommates. General Obligations Law § 7-103(1) provides that a deposit “shall continue to be the money of the person making such deposit”. The landlord holds it in trust; it does not become the landlord’s money, and it does not become the lease’s money either.

That gives a roommate who paid a specific sum a much clearer starting point than in states where the deposit is simply owed back to “the tenant”. It is still worth recording who contributed what, because the statute does not divide anything — searching the deposit title for “apportion” and “co-tenant” returns nothing — but the underlying principle is that the money remains that person’s.

The cap is one month’s rent under GOL § 7-108(1-a)(a), subject to the carve-outs in that section.

Section 235-f is about occupancy, not about tenancy. Making a roommate an actual tenant is a different question, governed by RPL § 226-b, and the answer is unfavourable. Consent to an assignment “may be unconditionally withheld without cause”, and the tenant’s only remedy if it is refused is to be released from the lease on thirty days’ notice. Sublet consent, in buildings of four units or more, is on a better footing: it “shall not be unreasonably withheld”, and a landlord’s silence operates as consent.

Removing a co-tenant is harder still. There is no statutory mechanism for it at all. Whoever is on the lease stays on it until the landlord agrees otherwise.

RPL § 227-c allows a tenant who is a victim of domestic violence to terminate the lease, and it wires itself into the Roommate Law in a way worth knowing. Under § 227-c(4)(b), where there are additional tenants, the landlord “shall not, except upon consent of such additional tenants, terminate or sever the co-tenancy”; the additional tenants have at least thirty days from the termination date to decide; and they hold the right to add an additional occupant as defined by § 235-f. So the apartment does not simply dissolve, and the people remaining have a route to replace the person who left.

What the section does not do is reduce anyone’s rent. The release runs to the tenant terminating the lease, and no further. The remaining co-tenants keep their liability, which is the gap this agreement should address.

This document binds the roommates to each other. The landlord is not a party to it, is not bound by the shares in it, and does not have to deal with roommates separately. Each tenant named on the lease can still be pursued for the whole rent. In New York the agreement carries an extra load, because § 235-f gives an occupant a right to move in and subdivision 6 gives them nothing after that — so if the occupant is to have any notice, any protection, or any claim to money they contributed, it comes from here.

A roommate agreement is a private contract, so most of what it does is decided by the roommates rather than by statute. The parts that state law does reach are the ones that involve the landlord — and the biggest of those is the deposit. Our guide to New York security deposit laws sets out what the landlord may hold and when it has to come back, which is the money the roommates are dividing between themselves.

The other place state law bites is non-payment. An internal agreement about shares does not change what the landlord may do if the total rent is short, and New York eviction notice laws explain the notices and timelines that follow — which reach everyone named on the lease, not only the roommate who fell behind.

For the obligations that run between a landlord and the tenants throughout the tenancy, and the rules that apply to both sides, see New York landlord tenant laws.

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check

Established 2004 · 20+ Years · All U.S. States & Territories · Statute-Based · Attorney-Reviewed

A Private Eye Reports™ service trusted by landlords, property managers, and attorneys.