Renting Rooms vs Full House Rental

[Sean Campbell]

I have a deal closing the end of October for a 4 bedroom house. House rentals usually go for around $1100-1400 in my area but rooms rent for around $450-550. The things that makes me weary about renting rooms is that utilities are usually covered by the landlord in those situations (at least all the times I've lived in over the years), and I don't like paying someone else's utilities. Any suggestions?

[Roy N.]

@Sean Campbell

We rent a fair number of furnished rooms to predominately international students, but to others as well.    While utilities are included in these arrangements, we do monitor or limit tenant control over utility consumption.  In buildings with central heating systems we use programmable thermostats which allow a "hard" max (heating) or min (cooling) temperature to be set.   In places with electric baseboard heat, we provide programmable thermostats (some of which we can monitor remotely - rooms) and control physical access to thermostats in common areas.

On the lease side of things, we make it clear that if utilities are abused (which normally means heat), we will provide them with one warning prior to assessing a surcharge.

Similarly, in our apartment buildings with central heating plants, if we see windows open during heating season, we provide a warning and, on subsequent offences, assess a heating surcharge to the tenant.   After three offences, the surcharge remains for the remainder of the heating season.