For those who rent out rooms

[Lisa Ryan]

1. Do you require your tenants/roommates to have renters insurance?

2. Do you expect your tenants/roommates to contribute to cleaning common areas (not just picking up after themselves, but actual dusting & vacuuming)?

3. Do you have rules regarding the living room & sharing the TV (was it a free for all, or was it more like this is my TV & my house, I watch what I want to watch, you can go to your room and do your thing)?

4. Are any areas of the house off limits?

5. Did you set limits or boundaries on guests in general, both day guests and overnight guests?

Just curious, I never had any of these. In my prime with 2 tenants I was bringing in $1,025 plus 2/3 of utilities on an $850 a month mortgage. Oh the good old days. For two years I had one tenant and during that two year period for two separate six month periods I had a 2nd tenant. We were cordial but they both mostly stayed in their rooms. I'm not the warm and fuzzy type & neither were they.  In my new house I can only have 1 tenant (you aren't allowed to park on the street overnight and I'm not car shuffling) and I'm trying to figure out how to do it better.