Student Rental House: 2 units - a family with kids wants one unit ...

[Justin H.]

I bought a house in January and turned it into a 6 bedroom home (3 up with kitchen, 3 down with kitchen ,separate entrances).

Idea was to have a student rental and I already have the 3 upstairs rooms leased as of May 1st.

For the basement unit, I have a mother (who is a student at the university) looking to move in. She has a working boyfriend, two 16 yr old daughters, and a son she splits custody of. She has the money and references to back it up, and has no problem from that side of things.

The Issue/question. Does anyone have experience/expertise in student rental/family splits or foresee an issue renting to a family in one unit while having the other unit with students, when the general idea was to rent to students fully. My rental income will be the same.

Thoughts?

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Justin H.:

I bought a house in January and turned it into a 6 bedroom home (3 up with kitchen, 3 down with kitchen ,separate entrances).

Idea was to have a student rental and I already have the 3 upstairs rooms leased as of May 1st.

For the basement unit, I have a mother (who is a student at the university) looking to move in. She has a working boyfriend, two 16 yr old daughters, and a son she splits custody of. She has the money and references to back it up, and has no problem from that side of things.

The Issue/question. Does anyone have experience/expertise in student rental/family splits or foresee an issue renting to a family in one unit while having the other unit with students, when the general idea was to rent to students fully. My rental income will be the same.

Thoughts?

 Does she qualify on her own?  Or does she need the BF's income to qualify?  Do they both want to be on the lease?

I would have no problem renting to the family.  You're only "out" I can think of would be occupancy limits.  But, normally that's 2 per bedroom plus 1, so they wouldn't be over that limit.  Sometimes you can get out of that limit, if you have a very good reason your building can't handle that many people - old pipes, septic system, etc.

As far as the BF goes, if she qualifies on her own, and would rather the BF not be on the lease, what I did was I'd put them down as having written permission to stay long-term.  I know this is not the popular way to do this.  But, I found that this way the tenant can stay, and has the power to kick out the BF if she wants to.  And if she asks me to revoke the written permission for him to stay, I can do that.  Then, I keep my tenant and get rid of the BF easily.

Yes, he could sue to be found by the court to be an actual tenant.  But, in my experience, they don't.  This worked for me.

Another option would be to put them on a month-to-month agreement.  Any problems, you can more easily get them out.

I would verify, though, that she is a student in good standing, if this is her reason for not having income.  I did this with all of my students.  They can usually just forward an email that has their financial aid package attached, or an email that says they are accepted.  If they're a student in good standing, they should have a college email address, too.