San Antonio Southside Room Rental

[Matthew Perry]

I recently purchased my first investment in the southwest side of San Antonio. I am working with a contractor who has been active in this market for over 10 years and is encouraging me to rent the property by the rooms after the rehab is completed. I had never heard of renting a property by the room outside of university systems and would like to know if anyone has experience with this and what criteria they used to chose this over traditional property renting. The house is a 3/1 with a detached 2 car garage that also has a medium sized enclosed room that was rented out by the previous owner. There is no water, kitchen, or bathroom in the garage room. All 4 rooms would share the one bathroom in the main house (which is my major concern).  

What do I need to know to make a safe, fair, and profitable decision???

[Joseph Cacciapaglia]

@Matthew Perry typically you'll make more money renting by the room, but you will have a lot more management issues too. The turnover in by the room rentals tend to be more often and you end up dealing with interpersonal issues. A lot of room renters expect the room to come with basic furniture as well. I think you're right to worry about the 1 bathroom. 2 room rentals per bathroom seems to be a pretty standard setup for many by the room rentals. Having 4 to 1 seems like it would cause more issues. I haven't done a ton of these deals myself, but have had a lot of clients in this space over the years. I think we'll see a lot more of these in the future, because of the rising cost of housing. If you don't mind dealing with calls about one tenant eating another's food or making a mess, then it could be a profitable decision.