Hello,

I am currently rehabbing a house in California (central coast). Majority of the house needs a lot of work and I foresee it may take 6-8 months or longer to complete the entire rehab work.

However, one part of the house on North side has 2 BRs & 1BA which could be fixed up relatively quickly. I am tempted to fix those two rooms & the bathroom in a month November/December and rent those two rooms out to university students before their spring semester starts. However, the house won’t have any functional kitchen for a while.

Is there any legal requirement to have a functional kitchen before the rooms can be rented out? If there is no such requirement, is there any downside to this plan?

Thanks in advance for your response

I don't know of any legal requirement to have to supply a kitchen on a room rental but downsides are: lower rents, tenants may likely complain about all the construction noise and dust, potential law suits, much lower rents to have to deal with the construction, a lot of disclosures needed, etc.

Another option could possibly be doing short term or vacation rentals such as AirBnB. If I'm staying in a place like that I do not necessarily expect to have kitchen access during my stay. And if it's in a university area then there is likely a good throughput of people needing hotel rooms