House Hacking in Rental Property

[Leo Kotschenreuther]

Dear BP,

it's time for me to move to a new place and I'm thinking about doing some house hacking this time.

Since I actually don't own any property where I live (SF Bay Area) and don't expect to do so at least for a while I am thinking about doing a house hack with a rental property.

This would mean that I would rent a property from somebody who actually owns it and then turn around and sublet all but one bedroom in the place to other people. Based on looking at current market rates for individual rooms and complete houses for rent, I am thinking that I may be able to lower my housing cost this way.

Potential upside:
By paying myself rent, I could net 300-400 dollars per month when there are no vacancies. Example would be a 3/2 house renting for 4200 and then renting out the master room for 1800 and another room for 1400. This would leave me with a portion of 1000 even though my room would rent for 1400 by market rate.

Potential downside:
I may have times where one or multiple of the rooms would be empty and then I would have to pay rent for them. This will likely especially happen initially when I first rent the place.

Now to my questions:
I spoke so far with one property manager about a property and they would have required everybody who would sublet from me to be on the main lease. I expect most landlords/ property managers to have this requirement and I would do so myself as a landlord as well.
What would be a great way to convince a landlord to not require this?
I am worried that if people get on the lease, they will also see how much the property rents for in total and think they are paying too much. How can I convince them that they are paying more for a reason?

What would you do in general to make this a successful venture?
Like have your own insurance and treat this like a landlording business just as if you owned the property yourself.

Looking forward to your responses!

[Ali Boone]

I think you're going to have a really hard time convincing any property manager or owner to let you sublet. AirBnB pretty much killed that options for most tenants. There's basically no advantage, and only a ton of risk, for a landlord to let their tenants sublet. 

Sorry, but that sounds super-shady about the roommates seeing how much the total rent is and convincing them they are paying more for a reason. What would that reason be, exactly?