Rent entire 4-bed house, or room by room?

[gzz]

Any thoughts on renting out a 4-bedroom house room by room v. listing it on its own?

I looked at craigslist prices, and doing room by room looks like I’d get about $200-300/mo more total, and probably easier to find tenants, as the entire-house price would have to be around $3200/mo and you’d think most people in that range would be buying so they can deduct mortgage interest.

Does anyone have experience with this? Where’d you get the lease for just the bedroom?

The single people I know in San Diego who share houses with roommates all rented the house together at once. But when I was an intern in a big city, renting big houses by bedroom was the norm.

[gzz]

My plan is to put up listing for both, but I’ll probably have to decide first, since the rent on the two smaller bedrooms will be extremely competitive in a popular market.

[Coronita]

Are you planning to still live there? I guess the question is whether you want to chase after 4 rents every month versus 1. Also, what happens if one doesn’t pay? I don’t know how that would work.

[spdrun]

Renting by the room might fall foul of the mini-dorm law. I’m not saying to be a goody two-shoes, but don’t get caught 🙂

[CA renter]

[quote=flu]Are you planning to still live there? I guess the question is whether you want to chase after 4 rents every month versus 1. Also, what happens if one doesn’t pay? I don’t know how that would work.[/quote]

This is exactly one of the main problems with renting rooms vs. a whole house (aside from code issues, as mentioned by spdrun).

If you rent room by room, you will have to manage four different tenants. That’s four different ads to attract tenants, four different lease agreements, four credit checks, four different people who might be bringing in boyfriends/girlfriends…not to mention all the chaos that might create among the tenants, etc. How would they share common space? Refrigerator/cupboard/kitchen privileges? Who is responsible for maintaining/cleaning shared bathrooms and other spaces?

If you’re living in the home and you know the room tenants well — and everybody gets along — that’s one thing (I’ve done that and lived with long-time/childhood friends), it’s another to live there and rent to strangers (done that, too…with stories to tell). But at least if you live there, you can keep an eye on things.

If you’re not living there yourself, I’d say no way. Not even close to being worth the potential hassle. Just my 2 cents.

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