Experience With By The Room Rentals In Austin
Adding rooms and kitchenettes is a totally different ballgame from renting out a single family room by room.
You want to rent out a single family room by room, just add the appropriate locks to the doors like any rental requires.
You want to add walls and kitchenettes, go stand in line at the permit office.
Now since I highly doubt you are going to go the route of adding walls and kitchenettes to a single family, let's talk about the lease that would govern a room-by-room rental in a single-family. I can speak from personal experience and tell you that renting out room by room to a group of people is going to have issues. Traditional lease isn't going to cut it. You should consider signing a lease with each individual and getting their deposits. Students are a mercurial lot. If you sign a lease with a group of friends and then they have a falling out two months later, it's not uncommon for one or two of the friends to just disappear. There's no way you can expect the leader of the student friends group who signed the lease to get everything covered to your liking or requirements. Do individual leases.
@Mark Anderson I've contemplated the same thing for one of my 2 bedroom units near the domain that hopefully I will implement in the next year or so. I also went to UT and did a group rental situation with 6 people in a 6 bedroom house. We all lived there for 2 years with a few people changing out and we actually added a girlfriend and wife to the group (not to the same guy) for a total of 8 people. I think doing the individual leases would have been a great option too if I did not know people. A few things I would make sure to consider for single leases, are you paying the utilities and internet and adding that to their rent? How to deal with shared areas (there's always 1 person that doesnt believe in doing dishes)? How to deal with disputes/loud music/drugs/disruptive behavior? Are pets allowed?
On the legal side, I would imagine you're only limited by the number of occupants allowed in a residence which can be found in the Austin city code (sorry I forget what it is). For adding rooms, the size needs to be a certain minimum depending on people living in it (found in Austin code) and I believe you're required to have a certain number of outlets per wall. So depending on the size of your place, I'm not sure if adding rooms is worth it. Personally I wouldnt add a kitchenette either. If people are willing to share a house, they're willing to share a kitchen. I would just make sure that it is part of the lease to clean up or terminate their lease.
I'm not sure what rent collection you use, but I currently use Cozy and it lets each roommate pay their portion of rent.
