I have been renting a room from a friend that recently bought a house. The house has four upstairs bedrooms, and we had been using two of those as bedrooms (the other two as office/recreation/storage) before another roommate just moved in. My friend that I rent from lives in the house … so now there are three occupants
Obviously the benefit to adding another roommate is that you reduce utilities cost to each person, so that’s good. But I’m paying $500 a month for rent and expected a reduction in rent since he decided to add another roommate, but he hasn’t brought it up. What’s customary here? Should I expect a break in rent because he decided to add another roommate to the mix?
Oh, and I now share my bathroom with the roommate. Should I ask for a decrease in rent? Thanks.
Yes, you should ask for a rent reduction. Do you have a written rental agreement that spells out what rooms are being rented for your sole use? If not, it will be more difficult to get your friend to modify the rent if they don’t want to.
Seems like a crappy thing to do to a friend who is paying rent.
In my opinion, yes I would want a reduction in rent based on the effective reduced amenities provided. A shared bathroom is a pretty dramatic difference in my opinion, especially if you originally signed up for a private bathroom.
How formal is this arrangement? Do you have a signed lease? Or just a verbal agreement that you would crash there for a monthly rent? In my opinion the more formal the better, even amongst friends. It helps to have details like this specified explicitly. I am assuming you don’t given that the new guy just moved in without your permission - that will make things a lot more difficult unless you are on very good terms with your friend.
It’s just a verbal agreement with a good friend, unfortunately. Nothing written or formally spelled out. I’ll have to ask for a reduction in good faith. Thanks for the replies.
I know it’s tough to say, but how much is a reasonable reduction? $50 a month less to get it to $450? So, 10 percent of the rent? Any thoughts? What would you ask for in this situation? Thanks again.
Looking at this from the owner’s side, the $500 rent for the first roommate might have been figured based on the desire to eventually have two roommates, and it’s just taken longer to get a second renter. In that case, ATLien’s gotten lucky in that s/her hasn’t had to share space up until this point. Even though they’re friends, the owner may not have shared this info with ATLien, though it sounds like the third roommate could very well be something new that the owner decided to do. I’d say it can’t hurt to ask, but be ready to have it shot down. Also keep in mind that the owner, your fiend, might be already cutting you a good deal.
Suppose one of the roommates leaves and hasn’t been replaced yet. Should he pay more in the interim?
My two cents: Your friend should have been more clear about what your rent entitled you to. I don’t think you’re necessarily entitled to a rent reduction, though.
I guess it also depends on what the new tenant is paying also. If he is paying $500 for a room and a shared bath, it could be argued that the rent just went up in response to market forces.
One is that you are all friends going in on a place, in which case a new roommate would automatically mean your rent should go down. But since your friend has bought the house, this doesn’t really describe your situation.
The other is that your friend is a landlord and you are renting a room from him, in which case what he chooses to do with the other rooms is his business. This more closely matches your situation.
I say asking for a $50.00 reduction for having to share a bathroom is reasonable.
How much is the owner’s mortgage including property taxes and hazard insurance?
What is the square footage of the house?
Do you get use of the common areas like living room, kitchen, dining, laundry, garage, etc.?
What is the square footage of your bedroom and bathroom?
Does the $500 /month include utilities? If so, how much are the owners utilities? If not, what % of the utilties do you pay.
What does the new tenant pay in rent? Is his room larger or smaller than yours?
How much would it cost you to rent comparable space in another house or apartment?
No lease, then tell him you are leaving because you got used to having your own bathroom. Then see if he’ll take $400 a month. The way I see it is that the bathroom alone is worth $50 and the money he is making off of the second tenant whould allow him to lower the burden on everyone, not just himself. That is, if he truely is a friend . . .
I think whether you “deserve” a rent reduction or not really depends on these two questions more than anything else. Sure it sucks if you are still paying the same amount to get less, but if you are paying less than market rate, you have little to complain about.
Really, I think this is the only relevant question.
If you can rent a private space with bathroom, access to whatever amenities you currently have, etc. for $300 a month elsewhere, I would ask for a reduction.
However, if a similar setup would cost you $800 elsewhere, I might just keep my mouth shut.
I would also consider what I was getting for my $500.
How much your friend/landlord pays for his mortgage, taxes, etc. isn’t really your business - you and he had a deal where you would pay $500 to use the space. If you found out his mortgage payment was only $500 a month would you feel cheated? What if you found out it was $2,500/month - would you start paying more?
If you do discover that you could get a similar space/setup elsewhere including a shared bathroom for less, then I would bring it up. If it turns out a similar setup elsewhere is much more - well, I would probably just say a silent thank you to your roommate for giving you a good deal.
It depends on what kind of lease/contract the OP has with the owner, and what that contract says the OP is specifically paying for. If he has it in writing that he’s paying for a private bath, the owner could be in breech of the lease. If the OP has nothing in writing, or the writing does not specify a private bath, then he can ask for a rent reduction all he wants, but the owner is not obligated to give it to him.
This kind of thing is why I think it’s generally a bad idea to rent from friends. Bringing financial obligations (and the inevitable disputes related to them) into a friendship seldom ends well.
If this was just a friendly house-sharing arrangement, the answer would be easy. When I was renting a house with a friend and we added a third person, we went from two of us each paying 1/2 of the total rent to three of us each paying 1/3.
Of course, even that gets complicated. In the case mentioned above, one person’s girlfriend moved in. He argued that he shouldn’t pay any more because she was sharing his space, not taking any from the rest of us. Since we shared all costs, through, we would clearly be using more electricity, water, food, and so forth. She ended up offering to do all of the cooking & cleaning if we didn’t charge her any rent/utilities. We jumped on the deal
This is irrelevant, and none of the tenants’ business.
