Tenant shovels snow for wifi

[Eric Pierpont]

I am currently house hacking a triplex and living in one of the units. I have my own wifi connection and to make a long story short, one of my tenants agreed to shovel snow this past winter for the password. This saved me plenty of money.

The same tenant has already offered to mow the lawn likely because he loves the location, realizes his rent is slightly below market and does not want to be kicked out of the month-to-month lease. I was thinking about offering access to my YouTube.tv account in the service exchange as a catalyst. This would save me even more money.

Should these small service exchanges as such be redrawn in the lease or are they better off under the radar? Any other ideas out there about how to save money related to landlord & tenant service exchanges?

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Eric Pierpont:

I am currently house hacking a triplex and living in one of the units. I have my own wifi connection and to make a long story short, one of my tenants agreed to shovel snow this past winter for the password. This saved me plenty of money.

The same tenant has already offered to mow the lawn likely because he loves the location, realizes his rent is slightly below market and does not want to be kicked out of the month-to-month lease. I was thinking about offering access to my YouTube.tv account in the service exchange as a catalyst. This would save me even more money.

Should these small service exchanges as such be redrawn in the lease or are they better off under the radar? Any other ideas out there about how to save money related to landlord & tenant service exchanges?

When you are running a business as a landlord things are typically black & white. Best done by the book and with automated systems.

HOWEVEEEEER

Your situation is different. You are house hacking. This dude is your tenant but he's also your neighbor. You live there, he lives there. This situation is gonna be much more casual and less corporate than a traditional landlord tenant relationship. I say you keep it simple and under the radar. A handshake agreement is fine. We aren't talking about anything major here. We got a YouTube password in exchange for another dude cutting his neighbors grass. We don't need to bring in the notaries, lol.