Do you rent out individual rooms in your STRs?

Question

I get phone calls on a regular basis about people wanting to rent out a room.  The people that call me are refinery contractors here for work.  I tell them NO.  I rent out the entire house to a group of people that are friends that work together at the refinery.  The person that calls me hangs up.  I've got some houses with 3, 4, or 5+ beds.  Would you rent out rooms to people or just hold the houses until you get a group?

Kathleen Osborne · Answer

Personally, I would not. However, more risk sometimes bring more rewards.There are several Bigger Pocket pod casts about house hacking by renting out rooms. Instead of splitting your monthly rent by the number of bedrooms, maybe split by number of bedrooms and add a $100 per room for the headaches of having to manage collecting rent from all the different tenants.

Maybe try it with only one of your rentals for a short period of time and see how it goes? Some of the advice in the pod casts I've listened to suggested, putting room numbers on the bedrooms, then table fridge shelves and cabinet shelves with the room numbers. Or you could invest in the $150 mini fridges and put one in each bedroom.

Good luck!!

Mike Shemp · Answer

We would not.

I'm sure it might work for some folks, but for security/liability concerns with a bunch of diffrent guests all in a shared space I wouldn't want to deal with that.

Mike

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

No we don't. But your model is different. I think (but what do I know) you should stick to renting the whole house to a group. I'm used to running carpenters but I suspect they are similar in nature to your oil refinery ruffians. Different groups might have different rules and habits. You don't want fights between different gangs in your houses. I know my carpenters were pig-headed and thought they were all tough guys and knew it all.

Especially after work...you know, a couple beers and the guns come out. Somebody makes a crack and it starts. If you're not there to break it up it could be bad....too much trouble for a few bucks I think. I'm sure you know what I mean......