Single family house-hacking: bedroom size considerations?

[Will Clift]

Hi, I'm looking to house-hack my first home purchase and here's one question that's come up for me: How should I take into account the size of the bedrooms in the house I'm thinking about buying? Conventional wisdom tells me to fit as many bedrooms into a certain square footage as possible; but when touring some of these houses where the bedrooms seem just big enough to fit a bed and not much else, my knee-jerk reaction is to think that nobody in their right mind would want to live in something that small. Is there any rule of thumb y'all have as to how large a room should be in order to rent it out on a room-by-room basis? Have any of y'all with experience in house-hacking single family residences run into troubles renting out your rooms because they were too small? Thanks for the help!

[Al Williamson]

Wow Clift,

Sounds like you want to set up a boarding house /  rooming house.

Those things work but are management intensive.

I've rented a lot of rooms via Airbnb as I travel about. I don't like twin beds. I think a room needs to fit a queen bed, dresser and nightstand to be comfortable.

Hope that helps.