Maintenance Issues When Renting by the bedroom

[Jabbar Adesada]

Hello everyone, I am going to manage a rent by the bedroom house hack pretty soon and I am curious as to what systems some of you have used to handle maintenance request. My goal is to manage the property as if I’m not living in it much like a student rental. Do you just underwrite more for maintenance and take care of what comes up within reason? Do you have systems for identifying how and who caused the maintenance problem so you can bill that individual appropriately? And also would you charge a separate fee for laundry/appliances. I don’t believe I can put it in the lease as a convenience as I will be using it personally, but I do think because I’ll have to maintain all of it, I should charge extra for that. What are some ideas you guys have?

[Andrew Powers]

Originally posted by @Account Closed:

Originally posted by @Andrew Powers:

Hello, my lease states individual's (non shared) living areas are full responsibility of that one roommate. And common areas are responsibility of all roommates. 

if something breaks in someone's non shared area, it is treated like a normal rental. In lease there should be a portion that states the tenant owes up to $xx for maintenance items. At least that is allowed in my state.

if something breaks in shared area, if it is obviously some specific person fault it is treated like the above non shared area. If it is a wear item, or not obviously 1 person's fault, then I fix. 

since I house hack, I am there to deal with maintenance item requests. But There are property management tools/ apps to deal with requests. 

for laundry, you can get coin / credit card operated machines. Most don't have that, especially when house hacking. Even if you add a few extra dollars to the rent for each person, that should cover it. Just make sure your room rent rate is not excessive compared to other rooms available on the market.

 Hi Andrew, I have a 5 bedroom tri-level house in North Phoenix near ASU and a major hospital I am turning into rent by the room. How do you advertise your rooms and how are you determining rent rates? How do you deal with sharing a bathroom between three people ? I was thinking of having a cleaning service come in and clean periodically. Is that a good idea or not necessary? Are your agreements for 30 days or are they long term leases?

Hi Ken, for rent rates and advertising I look at Craigslist and FB marketplace. My tenants are long term. Look around the area for available rooms, see how much they typically go for, and scale price based on your rooms amenities and location. Or for short term rental look at AirBnB. If a room has its own bathroom, I charge more. Make sure the price is not too close to a studio apartment because as a renter, if the price is close I'd rather a studio! 

For bathrooms, the less people sharing the better of course. But usually it isn't an issue for my house, partly due to good screening. Sometimes you just have to wait for it to be open. I recommend putting in the lease that max bathroom time shall be less than 15 minutes at a given time. 

For cleaning, my lease says all shall contribute to cleaning every 2 weeks. It's more of a roommates agreement thing to figure out. My tenants are 25+ so it doesn't get too messy... if tenants were college for example, I'd definitely do a cleaning service!