Spit it 7 ways and forget about it. There is no way to make these things absolutely fair as each room is going to have it’s own quirks, and so it’s best just to figure you guys are all going in for the house itself and dividing it up in a friendly manner according to your needs. The only exception would be if one of the spaces is spectacularly better (say, a suite with a private deck), or worse (a mattress on the floor) than the rest.
In any case, nickel and diming is not a great way to start a vacation. Someone will end up drinking more than their share of the beer, or missing some shared meals, or whatever. It’s best to agree on beforehand what will be shared (food? booze? gas?) and split all of that stuff evenly.
Split it 5 ways. The single person is getting his own room, and that’s an advantage, and he should pay more. However, he’s also getting a precisely equal share in the kitchen, living area, and proximity to the beach, not to mention not getting rained on by sleeping in the front yard, so he should not pay a full twice as much as everyone else.
I’m going with those who said the main thing is that you’re splitting the common areas of the house 7 ways, so that should take precedence. And as Rachellelogram said, it’s not like the people sharing rooms are being deprived; they want to sleep with their SOs. So as AnaMen suggested, give the single person the smallest room, split the cost 7 ways, and commence the squabbling over which couple gets which of the 3 best rooms.
And no, don’t get a cheaper place just to make this problem become too small to worry about. Sheesh.
Either do a 7 way even split or “sell” the rooms based off a percentage of total square footage if there is a great disparity of size.
The difference between 7 ways and 4 ways is always a 13% savings for the couples and a 75% increase for the singleton.
Which will actually be a 17% increase for the couples when the single person says “fuck these jerks” and decides to opt out rather than pay twice as much.
Then pay 13, 13, 13 for the couples and 10 for the single person?
Or maybe you can gift the single person a latex room-mate, make them pay for the room at 1/4 of the total cost and tease mercilessly for the entire holiday?
We just did a trip recently with 7 people, 3 couples and one extra. We got a 3 bedroom house and the extra person slept in the room with one of the couples (family.) Nobody suggested that they should get a discount and it didn’t occur to me to offer one- we split the bill 7 ways. They did get first choice of rooms.
If we had been forced to get a 4 bedroom and it turned out to be much more expensive than a 3, maybe the topic would have come up.
7 ways. That’s the only fair way, and it’s never going to be totally “fair” anyway. Actually last month we rented a cabin in the mountains and, oddly, there were 7 of us as well. We split it 7 ways but of course the rooms were unequal - there was a master bedroom with attached bath, a room with two queens and attached bath, a room with a queen and bunkbeds with no bath, and, you know, couches and such. (One serious problem with the cabin, once we got there, was that there was no bathroom you didn’t have to go through a bedroom to get to. Oh well.)
I did all the planning so I snagged the master for my husband and me. I did it partly to spare the others - he snores. The others ended up with a couple in one of the queens, a single in the other one in that room, a single in the queen in the bathroomless room, and one on the couch in the living room (we had two single females and one single male, all but the one girl just there without their partners, I think Mark may have slept on the couch just to avoid the mild weirdness of sharing a room, but not a bed, with an unrelated woman.)
Anyway, it worked out fine. Frankly, most of what you’re paying for is kitchen, porch, living room, etc.
I’ve had that before too. My brothers and their wives all got the bedrooms while I slept on the couch in the living room, with the only bathrooms attached to their bedrooms.
Thankfully, being a guy and there being a full moon out, I could sneak out to do my business unnoticed.
The last time I rented a “cabin”, I paid the lion’s share because it was my idea (my dad paid for the cabin the previous time because it was his idea.) It had 3 bedrooms (on on each of 3 floors!) with 2 of the unattached to a bedroom, and a huge floorplan. And my dad asked if I could invite my uncle and I am glad he came because the place was so big that if he hadn’t came it would feel too empty with 5 people in it!
I’ve done this sort of thing many times. I find by far the easiest way to deal with it is to just pay for everything up front myself and then let everyone else pay me when and how much they think is reasonable. That way…
I get to pick the house and my wife and I get first pick of bedrooms since we’re paying
Friends who may not be able to afford a full share get to come, and a week of memories means a lot more to me than the money.
In the end I’ve rarely ended up paying much more than I would have had we all divided the cost up at the beginning.
The single guy in the situation is going to continually get the short end of the stick - he’ll get stuck in the bunk bed room - probably towards the back of the house. The couples will spend at least some time pairing up. He’ll get to listen to the rest of you have sex.
Is he allowed to bring women back to his room for overnight?
Seven shares is probably the way to go, since paying for that eighth spot will cost him six times as much as it will cost each of the other six of you. Or maybe you could float a compromise: split it 11 ways, one share for each person, and one share for each room.
But first thing, everyone should watch It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world together.