House hacking Questions

[Jonathan Craig]

I have some questions:

I recently bought a 5 bedroom 3 bath house. I plan to househack it and I have some general questions.

1) Should I rent the whole house as a 4 bed 2 bath or by rooms individually? If I rent by room, I'm looking at 37% increase in ROI and 2-3% increase in cap rate than doing the whole house. What has everybody experiences been househacking by room? Is it worth the headache for 4 separate leases or just rent one lease for the whole house? I'm used to living with people but not landlording over them.

1)  How do you advertise a househack on FB Marketplace, Zillow, Craiglist, etc? If you have any templates or wording that works consistently for you I'd appreciate it.  

2) Controlling the temperature while house hacking.  How do you control the temperature amongst 3 to 4 other housemates?  How do you make sure fights don't break out about this. 

3) Splitting the utilities while house hacking.  If your house hacking, do you split utilities with housemates or include in the rent?  Does this strategy change if you go by room versus whole house?  

4) Washer and Dryer.  Do you provide w/d in the unit or do you require tenet to purchase.  I bought w/d in a previous househack but i've been told not too because it's one more item you have to maintain. 

Thanks for any help you can provide. 

[Grace Wang]

Hey @Jonathan Craig, where is this house hack located?

1) Rent out each one by bedroom...why not. If you're willing and able to live with three other people and living for free at the same time, what's to lose? If you were to rent out the entire house, where would you live? House hacking is a great way to ease into the landlording game-- You're living in your investment and able to get hands-on experience. I vote to get more cash and landlording experience vs worrying about having too many leases to manage. 

2) Use a header that's straightforward. Mine was along the lines of "Private Room Available in Shared House -- $750 + utilities"

3) Set expectations that it's a shared house and not everyone will get what they want. People will definitely be fussy about temperature, so allow them to have heaters and fans in their rooms. Get outlet protectors. 

4) Flat-rate utilities is the way to go. Some months will be covered, plus some change...other month's you'll pay a little more for utilities. Telling potential tenants that they don't have to worry about fluctuating bills tends to be a selling point for me.

5) Yes I provide the washer/dryer so all tenants can use the common hookup. 

Hope this helps!