House Hacking for beginners

[Pat Martin]

I’m thinking about having a friend move into my 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house (I live by myself currently). How would you go about determining rent?

My mortgage is $1,892 per month.

Heres what I came up with:

Rent $500, water bill $60, electric $110, garbage $16, home insurance $58, ADT security $32.18, cable $83, total $860.

Modern/updated home, 1,800 SF, washer/dryer, etc. 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Pat

[Grant Shipman]

Congrats on considering new moves and wanting to put thought into them!  

The previous comments are quality, so I'll just add the following: 

1) I highly highly encourage you to have a lease no matter what. Make sure the lease is clear to you both. Then following it no matter what- no favors, no anything besides following the lease for the sake of your friendship & learning good business practices.

2) Sign-up with a free service like Apartments.com that implements the lease.  Make sure it does the following things for you (this will also guard your friendship and help you learn good business practices):  

----1) accept security deposit & rent payments electronically (according to the lease) 

----2) automatically charge late fees (according to the lease)

Then keep to the lease and never accept payments outside of the free service like Apartments.com

I hope that helps!