One of the most popular apartment trends in recent years is subletting. If you aren’t familiar with the term, subletting is when a person who is renting an apartment, rents the apartment out to another person. You often see subletting when a person can’t finish his or her lease or if they are going on vacation for a few months and need help keeping the rent paid. There are a few things you need to take into consideration first before you agree to sublet someone’s apartment.

In most cases, sublets are not allowed in a lease as they are a separate legal agreement that the apartment complex hasn’t agreed to. If you are thinking about subletting, you need to make sure that your agreement with the legal resident of the apartment is allowed, otherwise you could find yourself out of a place to live in the middle of a month. Check with the laws or rules of your state or town and also check with the building management to find out for sure.

If you are agreeing to sublet an apartment for a limited period of time, essentially a glorified house sitting, remember, even if you are living there for six or eight moths, you can’t really change anything in the apartment since it isn’t really yours. That means six months of living around other people’s belongings and possessions; not a lot of fun when you really think about it.

Subletting can be a great way to get a sough after space sooner rather than later, but make sure you understand what you are getting yourself into before you do it.