About Sylvia Bergthold Expertise I can answer questions dealing with roommate situations including compatability, leases, placing roommate wanted ads, what you have to offer to a roommate, sharing of utilities and other services, interviewing techniques and questions, some legal aspects of housesharing, clearance information, etc.
Experience I have had roommates in my home for over 32 years and am the author of:
"SORRY, THE BOA HAS GOTTA GO!" A Roommate Survival Guide
Publications The Los Angeles Times, The HB-FV Independent, The Arizona Tribune, Lansing Michigan Rental Guide, Roommate Locator Newsletter, The Plain Dealer,, Las Vegas Sun, Apartment Lifestyles Magazine, Instyle Magazine, The Whiz.com, Cosmopolitan, Under 25, The Portsmouth Herald
I just moved in with my boyfriend and his two roommates in a three story condo. The rent is $2200 plus utilities. Our roommate, who has the bottom floor (master bedroom and own bathroom) agrees to pay $800. The problem is how to split the remainder. The rooms upstairs are the same size and we would be sharing a bathroom with the other roommate. My boyfriend and I agreed to pay $750 for our room and split the utilities between 4. Our roommate wants to pay $525 and have us pay $875 for the same size bedroom. Can you please shed some light on what is fair?
Answer Hi Trisha
First of all, it is NOT a good sign that you are already arguing about this matter. The way you have it split now is TOTALLY wrong. I am going to give you the formula that is used for this and you need to follow it it you want this arrangement to work.
Remember that rent is split by BEDROOMS, (three) NOT by the amount of people sharing it.
UTILITIES are split by the amount of people sharing the condo (four).
Okay, here it is:
There is a formula for it on line (hard to find), and sometimes landlords also can tell you what previous tenants paid (per person). However, I will go ahead and outline the formula here. Please PRINT THIS OUT for reference.
1. Get the entire square footage of the condo (the owner or landlord should be able to provide this for you).
2. Divide the entire sq ft by the amount of your rent ($2200) to get the dollar figure for ONE square foot.
3. Then measure each of your bedrooms, including closet space and private bathroom if applicable. You should have THREE separate amounts due to the different sizes of these rooms. The shared bathroom sq ft is divided by two and half is added on to each of the smaller bedrooms.
4. Multiply the sq ft of each bedroom (with the closet and bath sq ft) by the dollar amount of the one sq ft.
5. Now you should have the bigger bedroom coming up with a bigger dollar figure than the smaller bedrooms, especially since the big one has a private bathroom. Write down these three separate totals.
6. Add together the Dollar total of all THREE bedrooms (which includes the closets and bathroom if applicable).
7. Subtract that dollar figure from the total rent ($2200).
8. The remaining balance is divided by three (this is the common space in the apartment such as the living room, dining room, additional bathrooms, laundry room, kitchen, etc).
9. If you have one of smaller bedrooms, take the figure for it and add your third of the common space amount. The other small bedroom gets a third.
10. The bigger bedroom gets the other third of the common space amount.
11. The dollar figures you each will now pay should come pretty close to the total amount of the rent. You might have to adjust it by a few bucks for it to balance.
THIS IS THE ONLY FAIR WAY to allocate rent per person. You and your boyfriend will split the cost of the one bedroom, the 2nd roommate will have his cost of the smaller bedroom and the third guy will have to pay more because he has the bigger bedroom.
As you can see, there is NO WAY you and your boyfriend should be paying more rent than the guy with the master bedroom. Your rent and the 2nd guys rent will probably be pretty close to the same amount.
That's it Trisha. And hopefully you will WRITE all this up in a roommate agreement. You NEED to have a written roommate agreement that outlines the rental amounts each of you pay, plus other shared costs plus rules, such as no smoking, no pets, no overnight guests as an example. My book goes into lots of details about this.
Good Luck
Sincerely
Sylvia Bergthold
www.aroommatesurvivalguide.com
