Roommate Wants to Keep Shared Furniture When Moving Out

The lease is ending. Everyone’s packing. And your roommate just casually mentioned they’re taking the couch — the one you both paid for. If your roommate wants to keep shared furniture when moving out and you don’t remember agreeing to that, you’re not overreacting. This is the moment every shared apartment eventually hits, and it almost always turns into a fight because nobody wrote anything down when the stuff was bought.

Here’s the fastest fair answer: whoever wants to keep a shared item pays the other person their share of the current value, not the original price. A $600 couch two years old isn’t worth $600 anymore. Agree on the depreciated value, one person Venmos the other, done.

Who actually owns shared furniture between roommates?

If you split the cost, you both own it proportionally. If you paid 50/50, you each own 50%. That doesn’t mean either of you gets to walk out with it — it means one of you has to buy the other out, or you sell it and split the cash.

If one person paid for it and the other never chipped in, it belongs to whoever paid. Doesn’t matter how much they used it. Receipts settle this fast, so if you’re the one who bought it, dig up the confirmation email now.

How do you figure out what shared furniture is worth?

Depreciation rule of thumb for cheap-to-mid furniture (IKEA, Target, Wayfair): lose about 20% in year one, 15% per year after. So a $600 couch bought two years ago is worth roughly $600 × 0.80 × 0.85 = $408 today.

For a faster check: search the exact item on Facebook Marketplace in your city. Whatever similar used pieces are selling for is what yours is worth. Take an average of three listings and call it a day.

Once you have a number, the buyout math is easy. Person keeping it pays the other person half (or whatever their share was) of the current value. Half of $408 is $204. Not $300. Not $600. $204.

What if you can’t agree on who keeps what?

Sell it. Post it on Marketplace or your local buy-nothing group, split the cash by ownership percentage, and move on with your lives. Nobody has to lose, and nobody has to move a couch down four flights of stairs into a Uhaul that won’t fit it.

If you’re splitting a whole apartment’s worth of stuff, do a draft. Write every shared item on paper with its current value. Take turns picking, alternating who goes first each round. At the end, whoever’s total is higher pays the other person the difference divided by two. It’s the same math used to divide security deposit deductions — everyone walks away roughly even.

How to prevent the fight next time

Before you buy anything shared, agree on the exit rule. Two options work:

Option 1 — The buyout clause. “Whoever stays in the apartment gets first right to buy the other out at depreciated value when they move out.” Simple, common, and prevents a mid-move-out standoff.

Option 2 — The sell-and-split clause. “Any shared furniture gets sold at move-out and the proceeds are split by ownership share.” Cleaner if neither of you is planning to renew.

Put it in your roommate agreement the day you sign the lease. It takes two sentences and saves a friendship. If it’s already too late for that, at least keep receipts and screenshots of Venmo splits — those are the only things that end this argument quickly.

What about stuff you both used but only one person bought?

If your roommate bought the coffee maker and you used it daily for a year, that’s still their coffee maker. Use isn’t the same as ownership. The polite move is to offer to buy it if you want to keep using it — but they’re not obligated to leave it. Don’t be the person who walks off with something you didn’t pay for because you “used it more.”

Same goes for consumables and small stuff. If someone bought the shower curtain, the trash can, the drying rack — those go with them unless they say otherwise. Assume nothing.

How homies keeps this from happening

Every shared purchase you log in homies. records who paid, who owes, and the item’s original cost. When it’s move-out time, the app pulls up the full list of shared items with a depreciation estimate and suggests a buyout number for each one. No digging through old Venmo history, no arguing over who actually paid for the rug. rooming, minus the drama. Join the waitlist at joinhomies.app.