Rent by room in Greater Seattle area
Look forward to connecting with investors/property managers who rent by room. We can all share the pros and cons, learnings, laws around rent by room in Seattle/Redmond/Kirkland/Bellevue. I have been exploring rent by room lately and happy to exchange the knowledge.
I will start with some gotchas:
Lease: Two ways this can be done 1) Master lease and put each tenant on the lease, that puts peer pressure on everyone to pay the rent, keep the property clean etc. 2) Lease separately for each room, flexible renting and everyone isn't bound to others' wrong doing, tenants might prefer this.
Utilities: Three ways I have seen people managing utilities 1) Include average utility cost in rent and take care of all utilities yourself and have a cap at max utility after which tenants chime in 2) Utilities are paid by tenants but that could cause issues when renting by room and one person is overutilizing electricity etc. 3) Fixed cost of utility charged to tenant monthly and anything beyond that is paid by landlord
Prospective tenants for rent by room: 1) Students attending nearby colleges, put all of them on one lease and have them find roommates, put their parents cosign the leases, 2) Traveling nurses, they're catch all when comes to rent by room but usually short term, 3) Rent out by room to any individual professional, this creates more management overhead but keeps vacancy low
Common Areas: Try to setup such that common areas are avoided by tenants as much as possible. Some ideas: 1) put mini fridge, desk, chair, wardrobe, bed in each room. 2) Buy all common stuff such as toiletries, kitchen utensils, cleaning stuff.
Cleaning: Arrange cleaning service twice a month at landlord's expense, this not only keeps the house in great condition but also can be leveraged to inspect the house.
Laws: City of Seattle allows upto 8 unrelated persons in a SFH, so does Redmond and Bothell. Does anyone know about Kirkland? How much is this code enforced generally?