Roommates May Ruin your Credit: 3 Whys

Sharing a home or apartment with one or more roommates can be a great way to split expenses. But it is not without hazards. In fact, there are three ways a roommate can ruin your credit.

 ‘Our’ Lease Becomes ‘Your’ Lease

Signing a lease with someone else is just like co-signing a loan: You are ultimately on the hook for the entire amount if the other person doesn’t pay. If you sign a contract, even if someone signs it with you, you are responsible for performance under the contract. If you have signed a lease you are fully responsible for the rent … and the landlord can go after both of you. This is perhaps the most crucial thing to understand going into a lease: You could wind up paying the entire rent, plus more, if there are damages to the property. Can you afford that? If not, you can face eviction and/or collection accounts for balances owed, both of which can severely hurt your credit.

Utility Bill Woes

One of the crucial things you’ll have to decide is whose name the utilities should be in. If they will be in your name, what happens if you leave sooner than your roommate? If they are not in your name, what happens if they leave early, or if they don’t pay? And what if there is an unexpectedly large bill? Would you and/or your roommate be able to pay it? If not, who could be stuck with it? Utility providers don’t typically report payments to the credit-reporting agencies. But if bills remain unpaid they will be sent to collections, and those accounts do hurt credit score

Stolen Identity

We hear, on a regular basis, that victims know their identity thieves.While there is no study  of how often the perpetrator is a roommate, identity theft is often a crime of opportunity, and people that have ready access to your information have plenty of opportunity. Especially when they have access for long periods of unattended time, like a roommate would. Identity theft can wreak havoc on your credit reports and scores, and sometimes takes months—or years—to resolve. In the meantime, it may be difficult to get credit.

Protect Yourself

If you decide the benefits of a roommate outweigh the risks, here are some ways to protect yourself.

1. Screen your roommate as a landlord would. While exchanging credit reports is probably too much information (and could make it easier for the recipient to commit fraud), you could both get your credit scores and share those results with each other.
2. Treat personally identifiable information just as you would any other valuable. Guard it, allow only limited access to it, and keep track of it. Would you leave a $100 bill sitting out on the table? Apply this same principle to your financial statements, tax returns and information, medical info, and any other documents that have your information, particularly your Social Security number on them.
3. Monitor rent and utility bills—and your credit. If you and your roommate write separate checks for your shares of the rent, make sure their payment actually gets paid. When you move out, get a statement from the landlord indicating that the balance you owe is zero. If you are giving your roommate money for your share of the utilities, make sure those bills are getting paid. And monitor your credit.

-From Credit.com