Free Oregon 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. Oregon is different from every other state in this family because it provides a statutory route for the roommate who is not going on the lease: ORS 90.275‘s temporary occupancy agreement. It is signed by all three parties — landlord, tenant and occupant — and it is deliberately thin on rights, which is the point. Understanding what it does and does not give you is the first decision an Oregon roommate group has to make.

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A roommate agreement settles rooms, rent shares, deposit shares, shared costs, guests and exit terms between the people living together. It settles none of them against the landlord. Every tenant named on the rental agreement remains liable for the whole rent where the agreement makes that liability joint and several, and Oregon creates no such rule: “joint and several” and “jointly and severally” return zero across all 533,393 characters of chapter 90. The two occurrences of “jointly liable” both concern a domestic-violence perpetrator’s liability before exclusion, not how roommates divide rent.

• Who is a tenant on the rental agreement and who is a temporary occupant under ORS 90.275
• Whether a three-signature temporary occupancy agreement has been signed
• That a temporary occupant has no tenancy rights and no right to cure
• Each roommate’s share of the rent, and who pays the landlord
• Each roommate’s share of the deposit, and a buy-out for anyone leaving first
• That the deposit accounting waits for the remaining tenants to deliver possession
• Guests, and the tenant’s duty under ORS 90.325(1)(g) to require them to behave
• The notice a departing roommate gives the others, and who approves a replacement
• That the agreement binds the roommates only and does not bind the landlord

• Calling someone a temporary occupant without the paperwork. ORS 90.275 requires a written agreement signed by the landlord, the tenant and the occupant.
• Assuming the tenant is safe if the occupant overstays. Subsection (9) lets the landlord terminate the tenant’s own tenancy, except where ORS 90.449 protects the tenant.
• Screening a proposed occupant for credit or income. Section 90.275 permits conduct and criminal-record screening and forbids those two.
• Expecting a deposit refund when you move out first. ORS 90.300’s clock runs from termination and delivery of possession, and ORS 90.456 says so expressly in the domestic-violence case.
• Looking for a city cap on unrelated occupants. ORS 90.112 voided those ordinances statewide.

Most states leave the person who lives in the spare room without a legal category. Oregon gives them one. ORS 90.275 allows a landlord to permit an individual to become a temporary occupant of a dwelling unit under a written temporary occupancy agreement, and the section then specifies both who signs it and what it must say.

All three parties sign: the landlord, the tenant, and the proposed occupant. That is the first practical point, because an arrangement the roommates make between themselves is not a section 90.275 occupancy no matter what it is called.

The agreement must expressly state that the occupant has no tenancy rights, that the tenant may terminate the occupancy at will, that the landlord may terminate only for a material violation of the temporary occupancy agreement, and that there is no right to cure a violation. Under subsection (8) no written notice of termination is required. Under subsection (10) an occupant who remains after the tenancy has ended, or after the tenant revokes permission by terminating the agreement, is treated as a squatter — and ORS 90.110(5) puts squatters outside chapter 90 entirely, so none of the residential act’s protections apply.

Two further provisions matter to the tenant rather than the occupant. Subsection (9) allows the landlord, except where ORS 90.449 protects the tenant, to terminate the tenant’s own tenancy under the ordinary termination sections if the occupant fails to promptly vacate — or if the tenant materially violates the temporary occupancy agreement. And subsection (11)(c) provides that a tenancy may not consist solely of a temporary occupancy, so this route cannot be used to run a whole household.

The screening rule is worth stating because it is counter-intuitive. The landlord may screen a proposed temporary occupant for conduct and for criminal records, but may not screen for credit history or income. That inversion makes sense once you remember that the occupant owes the landlord nothing: their finances are irrelevant, their behaviour is not.

ORS 90.456 answers this, and the answer is that nothing happens for a long time. Where a tenant terminates under the domestic-violence provisions, the section provides that if there are any remaining tenants of the dwelling unit, the tenancy shall continue for those tenants — and that the deposit, fees and prepaid rent are accounted for only following termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession by the remaining tenants.

ORS 90.300(12) and (13) then give the landlord thirty-one days from termination and delivery of possession to account. Put together, a roommate who leaves while the others stay has no claim on the landlord at all, and no clock running in their favour. ORS 90.453(5) confirms the position from the other direction: the other tenants remain subject to the rental agreement.

So the departing roommate’s money is, in practice, in the hands of the people still living there. A buy-out clause — naming the amount, the payer and the date — is the only thing that will move it, and it belongs in this agreement.

Oregon has two rules here and both are helpful. ORS 90.262(3) provides that a landlord’s occupancy guideline may not be more restrictive than two people per bedroom, and it defines a bedroom as a habitable room of at least seventy square feet, excluding bathrooms, closets, hallways and storage areas. So there is a floor under what a landlord may impose, and a definition of what counts.

ORS 90.112, enacted in 2021, went further and voided local occupancy limits based on the familial or nonfamilial relationships among the occupants. (It is enacted law but was not added to chapter 90, so searching the chapter will not find it.) Those rules were common in college towns and they are gone. So a relationship-based cap of that kind should no longer be enforceable in Eugene, Corvallis or anywhere else in Oregon. Local housing codes were not researched for this page, and limits that do not turn on how the occupants are related are untouched by ORS 90.112.

Note that chapter 90 does not define “guest”, “occupant” or “temporary occupant” among its fifty-eight defined terms. Oregon draws the line by the presence or absence of the section 90.275 writing rather than by a definition, which is a cleaner test than most states manage.

ORS 90.325(1)(g) requires the tenant to behave, and to require other persons on the premises with the tenant’s consent to behave, in a manner that does not disturb neighbours’ peaceful enjoyment. That is the statutory hook a roommate conduct clause hangs on. Because the duty is placed on the tenant in respect of their own guests, it is reasonable and consistent with the statute for a roommate agreement to make each roommate answerable for the people they invite.

This document binds the roommates to each other. The landlord is not a party to it — with the single exception of a section 90.275 temporary occupancy agreement, which is a different document requiring the landlord’s signature. Where the rental agreement makes the tenants jointly and severally liable, each can still be pursued for the whole rent regardless of the shares recorded here — and nothing written here moves anyone on or off the tenancy.

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 Oregon 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 Oregon 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 Oregon landlord tenant laws.

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