How to sign a roommate agreement online

What a roommate agreement covers

A roommate agreement records what the people sharing a home agreed among themselves. The questions it should answer are the ones that cause arguments later:

• Rent: how much each person pays, when, and to whom, if one of you pays the landlord.
• Bills and shared costs: utilities, internet, cleaning supplies, and how they are split.
• The security deposit: who paid what, and how it is divided when the lease ends, including who covers damage they caused.
• Rooms and shared spaces: who has which room, and how the kitchen, bathroom and storage are shared.
• House rules: guests, quiet hours, chores, pets.
• Moving out: how much notice someone gives, whether they find a replacement, and what they owe until then.

Write it in any word processor and save it as a PDF of up to 8 MB. It sits alongside your lease: the landlord isn't a party to it unless they sign it too.

Why sign it, if you all get along

Money questions tend to come up when someone moves out: who keeps how much of the deposit, who pays the last month's bills, whether the person leaving owes rent until a replacement moves in. Months later, nobody remembers the same conversation, and a group chat is easy to dispute.

A signed agreement records what you agreed, and when. With Attest, each roommate's passkey, a cryptographic key only they control, unlocked with Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello or the device PIN, signs a statement that names the agreement's fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash, a short code calculated from the file's contents). The signing time is part of what each passkey signs, and the completed agreement is anchored on Horizen, a public blockchain, whose block time shows when. Change one byte of the agreement, of anyone's entries or of the signed pages, and verification fails.

Everyone downloads the same sealed PDF: the signed pages, with a "Signed with Attest" stamp on each signature and a seal line at the foot of every page, a certificate of completion, the audit trail up to completion and a "Verify it yourself, without us" page, with the full evidence, the original document and a standalone verifier attached inside. If a roommate questions it, anyone can check it for free at attest.datahubz.com/verify, or with that verifier, in any browser, even without Attest.

How everyone signs

One of you sends the agreement; everyone else just signs.

The person who sends it:

1. Goes to attest.datahubz.com/sign, clicks Start free and signs in with their email.
2. Sets up their signing key once, with a passkey and a recovery phrase, on the Security page.
3. Clicks New agreement, gives it a plain Title such as "Roommate agreement" and attaches the PDF.
4. Under Signers, types each roommate's email address, and checks Add me as a signer (sign in-app, no email).
5. Under Verification, chooses Private.
6. Clicks Next: place the fields, places a signature and a date signed field for each person, and clicks Create and send.

Each roommate:

Each roommate signs on their phone or computer with Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello or the device PIN; on a computer without its own passkey, they can use their phone's passkey through the browser's "Use a phone or tablet" option.

1. Opens the email, taps Review and sign and sets up a passkey, with Face ID, Touch ID or the phone's PIN. No account, no password, nothing to pay.
2. Waits for the sender to release it: the agreement is end-to-end encrypted, so the sender's browser releases it to each new key, never Attest. Attest emails the sender, and each roommate is emailed as soon as it's released. When several roommates are waiting at once, one confirmation in the agreement (Unlock it for [n] signers) and one passkey approval release it to all of them.
3. Taps Open and start signing, signs, and taps Sign with your passkey.

The sender signs in the app with Sign on the agreement's row, whenever they're ready. When the last person signs, everyone can view and download the signed copy from their link, and every party is emailed a link to the certificate.

Keep it between you

A roommate agreement says who lives where and what each person pays. Attest encrypts it in the sender's browser before upload, and only the people on it can open it, in their own browsers; Attest stores it only as ciphertext it can't read. What each roommate fills in is encrypted in their browser too.

Attest does see the information around a document: its title, file name, size and type, the sender's note, everyone's email addresses and names, where fields are placed and when each step happened. That is why the steps above use a plain title and Private: a public certificate would show anyone with its link details such as the title and each signer's name, though never the agreement itself. With Private, only the people on the agreement see its certificate.

When someone moves out or things change

People move, rents go up, a new roommate arrives. Write the change as a short update, or a new version of the whole agreement, and send it for signature by everyone it affects, including the new roommate. Mention the earlier agreement in it by its verification code (ATT-XXXX-XXXX), printed on its signed copy, so it's clear which agreement it changes. The earlier agreement still verifies, so the history stays on record.

If a roommate declines to sign, the document closes for everyone and the sender is emailed; talk it through and send a revised version.

What it costs

Your first 2 documents are free, in total, which covers the agreement and one later update. Nobody else pays to sign, and signing a document someone sends you through Attest never uses your own documents. If you need more, the Signing plan is $5 a month for 20 documents, and you can cancel any time.