Dividing the Rent and Being Fair

March 8, 2007 10:06 AM

Is it ethical to divide the rent differently for a new roommate?

Our current rent is divided 850/850/800 and the 850 person is moving out. Everything seemed fair at that ratio. [I'm an 850er also.] The 800 person wants to charge the new roommate -whom we haven't found yet- 900. Even at that rate, the room is a good deal and we won't have trouble filling the space in a heartbeat, but I'm worried that the new person will eventually resent us for not paying as much. The landlord will require all three of us be on the lease. I have my hesitations. Is it OK to do this?

posted by yeti to home & garden (39 comments total)

If you are clear at the outset that the rent is 900, and the new roomie agrees to it, you have no ethical problem. It is not necessary to split rent perfectly equally - that just tends to be the agreement most people make.
posted by arcticwoman at 10:10 AM on March 8, 2007

Is there an actual justification for this? Is the room nicer, bigger, sunnier, whatever?

I found out halfway through a lease that the guy with the nicest bedroom, who was the only one on the lease and found the roommates on his own, was paying the lowest rent. (And I mean nicest bedroom by a mile -- separate sitting room, huge closet, gorgeous view from the windows, biggest bedroom, most separate/private entrance.) I was really really really annoyed about it, and it colored my perception of him from that point on, even though what I was paying for my room was probably market-price fair. It just made him seem like a leech; my work was allowing him to live above his means. (Granted, his other actions in life contributed to this, but still.)
posted by occhiblu at 10:12 AM on March 8, 2007

Things to ponder:

Previously, you were at equal level with another roomie, which meant that you had equal "rights" with them.
Would this change if there was one person paying more?

Would the 800 person want a rent reduction if the new person paid more, or are they proposing that you too pay 800?

If the above is true, can you easily afford the $50, or would it make a difference to your lifestyle?

It obviously bothers you enough to post it here...
posted by Magnakai at 10:13 AM on March 8, 2007

On reflection, Occiblu makes a perfectly good point - if the room is bigger/nicer/comes with hot babes then yes, you can totally charge more.

Getting exactly what you pay for is never a bad thing.
posted by Magnakai at 10:15 AM on March 8, 2007

I don't think it would be unethical, but basically you're just going to get this new person to pay for your $50, no?
Is it worth it to get into problems with the new roomate for 50 dollars?
posted by CrazyLemonade at 10:16 AM on March 8, 2007

There are two issues here:

(1) Is there a justification for an unequal division of the rent. There can be any justification you want - the costlier room is bigger or better is most common. You might also have a "seniority" system, based on who has been there longest. Or one based on income, like a graduated scale for paying a doctor. What is important is that there is some system for determining who contributes and how much, and the division is not simply arbitrary.

(2) That there is transparency - e.g., everyone is clear about the system and agrees on its implementation. If your new roommate agrees to the rent and does so on the basis of a full accounting of why you pay different rents and how much they differ, then its fine.

So, as long as you have a coherent justification for the different rents, are clear in presenting this to your new roommate, and s/he agrees to both the justification and the specific rent distribution, then I see no problem with this.

BTW, I am an ethicist, but I am not your ethicist.
posted by googly at 10:21 AM on March 8, 2007

The 800 person wants to charge the new roommate -whom we haven't found yet- 900

1. Why?

2. Depending on the answer to #1, I would question the ethics and ability to trust the ethics of the $800 person.

3. Do you really want to create a situation where the $900 person says "Hey, since I pay the most rent..."?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:21 AM on March 8, 2007

I think the rent should be divided based on the actual rent and the actual space provided. I have always thought it was kind of yucky when the person who is the long-term tenant or the primary leaseholder uses that status to get the new person to pay more than their share (and I have never done that when I am the long-term person). Also, in rent-control situations, it's sort of profiting from the rent control in a weird way. (The "higher" rent may not seem high to the new person.)

Lots of people disagree with me. Sometimes because, hey, I'm the person on the contract, or I'm the person with the relationship. Sometimes it's because the long-term person has some additional responsibilities (dividing up bills, whatever), which is a decent basis for some consideration.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 10:22 AM on March 8, 2007

There is a difference between being ethical and being fair. If this person is not receiving something substantial in exchange for having the highest rent then no, the proposed arrangement is not fair. On the other hand, I'd argue that an ethical bargain is any one in which the parties involved are informed of and satisfied with the arrangements. If you are upfront about the arrangement and the third individual agrees to it they have no cause for resentment and I think a lot of people would not resent paying more as long as they agreed at the outset to what they felt was a reasonable price (and having no problem renting the room at that price is the definition of reasonable). I guess if I were the prospective renter my position would be, they were there first, they staked out a desirable property at a better than average price, they get the most benefit of that. If I'm getting what I want within my price range, I'm satisfied.

If you or your current roommate have any problem with informing prospective roommates that this inequity exists, though, that indicates that at heart you don't really believe it is right.
posted by nanojath at 10:25 AM on March 8, 2007

I second the idea that you don't necessarily want the new person to have the "I pay the most rent" card in his/her pocket -- especially since it's not a friend or someone you know.

But if you show the person the room he or she is getting and tell the person how much rent everyone pays under this new structure -- and he/she accepts -- I don't see how there's an ethical problem there.
posted by ontic at 10:25 AM on March 8, 2007

(Like most people have already said,) based on the experiences of a few friends, I'd say ethical or not, unless the room has a real reason to be priced higher, when that person finds out they WILL resent you. Just keep that in mind.
posted by inigo2 at 10:25 AM on March 8, 2007

Oh, and my traditional caveat is that while the arrangement (if transparent and accepted) certainly seems to be ethical, that doesn't mean it's the best thing you could do. The best thing would be to split the rent according to space allowed, where two people with equal amounts of space / quality of space pay the same amount.
posted by ontic at 10:28 AM on March 8, 2007

This happened to me when I first moved to San Francisco in 1994. It was a rent-stabilized place and my new roommates decided to up the price of my room and lower their rents. When I found out it felt really crummy; like I was now subsidizing their rents. We eventually had a big house meeting and re-set the rents to their previous rates. It was uncomfortable and put a downer on the house vibe for a few weeks.

And that's the key: house vibe should definitely trump petty finance issues. Where you live should feel warm and friendly and honest and everything else that smacks of the good stuff we want to associate with home. To this day, some of my closest friends are from that San Francisco apartment.

I agree with other posters that the only way this would work would be if a) there's something about the room that is worth the extra $50 and b) you are completely up-front with the new roommate that you're raising the rent on that room.
posted by funkiwan at 10:46 AM on March 8, 2007

What do you plan to say to him when he asks? Lie and say the old guy paid that much for no good reason and you want him to do the same? Yeah, good luck finding a roomie who will say "Yes, that makes perfect sense!"

Unless you can justify it, its a ripoffand even the dimmest rented will figure that out. If you try to hide it and be cute expect to have some well-deserved trouble. Honestly, you guys sound like the roommates from hell. Honestly, if your landlord walked in and said "You! over there! Give me 50 dollars more now!!" you'd be having kittens and posting to askme asking for legal advice.

Renting with roommates is tough enough without these nickel and dime schemes. Mutual respect, accountability, and transparency go a long way, man.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:54 AM on March 8, 2007

It's completely fine to divide the rent any way you all agree to, as long as you aren't profiteering (i.e. collecting more rent than is actually due to the landlord).
posted by mattbucher at 10:57 AM on March 8, 2007

I pay the most rent in my apartment, but my bedroom is the master with its own bathroom and a huge closet and clearly worth more. I pay $200 more than the person with the smallest bedroom and $100 more than the person with the middle-sized bedroom. Am I upset? Nope. I am paying what I believe to be the value of my room and the rents were agreed to by everyone.

In your case, raising the rent by $50 for that person means only a $25 savings for each of you and is an even $75 step between each "level." If the levels correspond to the perceived value of each room, I wouldn't fret over it too much. Otherwise you're inviting a lot of trouble over only $25/month.

I have a friend who found an apartment and charged the roommate more for the second bedroom than my friend paid for the master bedroom since "he found it and was there first." I always thought it was a shitty move on his part and if you do something like that, the new person will think so too.
posted by ml98tu at 10:59 AM on March 8, 2007

Where's that extra $50 going to go? Are you both going to now pay $25 less? (ie an 775/825/900 split, so the rent still totals $2500). Just curious, and trying to make the numbers a little clearer.
posted by cgg at 11:02 AM on March 8, 2007

$900 guy could end up feeling like he doesn't need to do as many chores. I mention this in case it helps you make your case with the other roommate.
posted by amtho at 11:02 AM on March 8, 2007

Not sure yet on how it's proposed to be split. Either 900/825/775 or 900/850/750. I really think what I'm paying is already fair. My room and the free room are about equal. I have a small bathroom to myself, but the free room actually has a large closet and a 6'x10' adjoining room for work/storage/spare bed/whatever. The cheaper room is upstairs so she has to walk downstairs to use the bathroom.
posted by yeti at 11:13 AM on March 8, 2007

Is $50 worth the potential problems?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:20 AM on March 8, 2007

Your private bathroom is roughly equivalent to the value of a 6' by 10 ' storage space. You and the new roomie should be paying equal amounts of rent.
posted by Greg Nog at 11:42 AM on March 8, 2007

I don't think that changing the rent structure to make it MORE complicated is wise. It's hard enough for three people to share space peacefully.

And yes, it will seem that you are taking advantage of the new person just for being new.

You could split the rent evenly and offer 800-person the larger room. That way, she gets dibs on the nicer spot if she wants it for only 33 bucks more than she pays now. Or leave it as it is, so that she can preserve her current rent in exchange for the less desirable room.
posted by desuetude at 11:43 AM on March 8, 2007

Wait, this room doesnt have a bathroom but yours does? I'd think most people would expect the bathroom person to pay a whole heck of a lot more.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:44 AM on March 8, 2007

Agree with damn dirty ape, from what you've described the room with the bath pays the most, the room with a room pays the middle and the room a flight of stairs away from a bathroom pays the least (everything else being equal which they rarely are).
posted by Mitheral at 11:54 AM on March 8, 2007

Third damn dirty ape. The room with it's own bathroom would be worth more to me than the extra storage space. In any case, charging $900 for that room seems out of line. Either keep the rents as they were or adjust them so that you pay most for the bathroom and stairs pays least for having to use the stairs to pee, with new guy in the middle somewhere; maybe 867 for you, 833 for new guy, and 800 for stairs.

Whatever you decide be upfront. If, say, you raised new guy to $900, and lowered stairs to $750, and did not disclose that he's going to be rightfully pissed when he finds out he's paying $150 more than stairs and $50 more than you.
posted by 6550 at 12:13 PM on March 8, 2007

I lived in houseshares for quite a while, and ethical or not, unless this room is clearly superior in some way it sounds like a recipe for massive tension and resentment further down the line.

Having a new guy pay more firstly puts him in an awkward position: he's either marked as a kind of outsider if he knows about it, or else it's a secret that has to be kept.

More importantly, there are always going to be some kinds of conflicts and disagreements in a houseshare, whether they're handled well or badly. In every single discussion over bills, cleaning, noise, friends staying over; this is going to be a factor. It could saying out loud "I pay more rent than you so you can do more cleaning". Or it could just be a silent resentment: "first these leeches charge me more rent than them, now they want me to empty the damn garbage when they're the ones who..."

I'd say keep it at the present rate, unless the room is significantly larger and better than both the others.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:23 PM on March 8, 2007

I was once in a situation where the rent/space arrangement was severely out-of-balance.

The one guy whose name was on the lease paid $700. His room was about 10' by 18'.
The guy with the second-largest room paid $1000. His room was 10' x 10'.
I had the smallest room, for which I paid $900, and it was 14' x 7'.

This was in the East Village, mind you. The overall monthly rent for the apartment was actually rather low, but the leaseholder was the only person who enjoyed this savings.

My feelings were pretty mixed. On the one hand, I was getting a decent deal on my room. On the other hand, I totally resented the fact that this dude got an incredible room and that I was subsidizing it. I wasn't too upset at first, but the anger grew over time.

So, like others in the thread, I would say that the strain on roommate relations isn't worth the $50. However, you are far more likely to get away with this sort of thing someplace where space is dear (like the East Village) then, say, a college town in the midwest. I did, after all, stay in the apartment for over a year.
posted by Afroblanco at 12:28 PM on March 8, 2007

Whose names are on the lease? If you or you and the other roommate sublet a room and you're the one(s) responsible for paying the lease, I don't think it's unethical to charge the new person more. You have the risk of turnover, finding a new roommate, collecting rent, answering to landlord, etc. Just don't ever mention anything to the other roommate. Why ever mention it?
posted by acoutu at 2:28 PM on March 8, 2007

You have the best room in the house. A private bathroom is worth way more than an empty storage space. You should under no circumstances ask someone to pay more than you for the other room unless you want them to feel that you're taking them for a ride because you got to the apartment first. It will make them resentful. It seems to me that the way you currently split the rent is quite fair, and I wouldn't mess with it.

You say the cheaper room is upstairs so she has to walk downstairs to use the bathroom, but presumably she also gets more privacy. I think that I would feel quite ripped off if I were the new roommate paying $150 a month more than her, though I can see why she wants this new scheme. But, no, it doesn't seem that it would be fair.
posted by Dasein at 2:32 PM on March 8, 2007

I think that this thread has nicely illuminated that which room is "worth more" is obviously a matter of opinion and that people tend to think that the grass is greener in the other bedroom.

(Every other thread on roommates in AskMe can demonstrate that we humans have a tendency to develop simmering resentment over any sort of inequity in a shared living situation.)

acoutu, yeti already said that all names are on the lease.
posted by desuetude at 2:46 PM on March 8, 2007

I don't think the bathroom is necessarily worth more than the spare room. 6 by 10 is a pretty big room, and would possibly make a great office. I'd probably prefer that to a private bathroom if I had the choice.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:48 PM on March 8, 2007

If extra space = bathroom, then it just seems wrong (personally, I'd pay more for a bathrom than extra space, but that's just me). And if the new housemate ever finds out, there goes the idea of an amicable houseshare! (And given that they'll be on the lease, they'll find out)

Okay, the market can bear it. But that's really an excuse for the landlord to increase the overall rent, not for you to screw the new housemate over. From your point of view, it means that you will have your pick of potential housemates and can choose someone who will be a great housemate - which having had (and heard about) some very dodgy housemates in the past, is probably worth $50/$25 a month to have the luxury to avoid!

Unless you're completely open about how much everyone else is paying, in which case, go for it!
posted by finding.perdita at 2:59 PM on March 8, 2007

I'd happily trade a private bathroom for that extra room. But I also know that generally speaking, the bedw/bath room is traditionally the one that has the higher rent, and if I were being asked to pay more than you do for your room, I'd feel taken advantage of and be rather miffed. If you actually believe that the extra room makes that bedroom more valuable, then move in there yourself and keep the rents as they are (or put the rent up on your now vacant old room, as it would traditionally be the norm--but don't lower the rent on the upstairs room). But if that idea makes you think "don't be ridiculous--I've got a private bathroom" then leave the rent as it is and count yourself lucky to be getting a good deal already. Personal preference aside, the extra little room and a private bathroom are roughly equal bonuses and the rent division as it is now sounds fair.
posted by Martin E. at 3:07 PM on March 8, 2007

I haven't seen your place, but just from your comment describing the setup, the increased rent seems completely fair to me for a spare room/office. The key to keeping everybody happy is being upfront about it from the start.
posted by allterrainbrain at 3:12 PM on March 8, 2007

Thinking again, and visualizing the size, you might have a case for raising the rent on that room if it would be good as a dedicated office/workspace for someone who wants one--ie has at least 2 electrical outlets and good lighting. If you look at it and think "Yes, this is a little office" then maybe. If you look at it and think "It's really just a big closet, you could make it a cramped, perfunctory office by running an extension cord in" then no. But of course you'd have to be upfront about the different rent amounts, and why, and realize your pool of potential roommates has shrunk from people just wanting a room to people who want a room+office and are willing to pay for it. But I still think it only warrants raising that rent above yours, not actually lowering the rent on the upper room beyond what it is now (unless it's especially small or doesn't have an actual closet).
posted by Martin E. at 3:25 PM on March 8, 2007

I'm surprised about the lack of economic emphasis here. If you can find a willing tenant at $900 or more, for me that ends the fairness inquiry. As long as you're clear about everyone's obligations, there's nothing at all unethical about taking advantage of changed market conditions.

Think about how this works in business. Tenants with below-market leases regularly sublease their space to the benefit of themselves, not the landlord. The difference is of course that these tenants don't "live" together as do you and your roommates, but that goes to issues of human compatibility, not equity or ethics.

If your ultimate question is whether the roommate will eventually resent the situation, that seems much too situationally specific to get an answer here. But I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't reevaluate the rent in a new market. Over the lease term, $50 monthly is nothing to sneeze at.
posted by padjet1 at 4:06 PM on March 8, 2007

Ethically OK, practically dangerous.

I was once in a situation similar to this. As one of two founders of a share house, we had the choice of the rooms. My co-founder then expounded to me the contract / market price philosophy - "if an applicant is prepared to pay what you are asking, then end of story - it's a fair deal".

So, we ended up paying less than the others who we accepted into the house, despite having by far the better rooms.

I think this bit me on the arse in the end, when one of the guys who was paying more-for-less stole the household's rent money & somehow contrived to make it seem that I had done it, whereupon I was thrown out.

I am convinced that this was a political move to get my room, which was actually the best of the best, and this machiavellianism was a direct result of the fact that pure market economics can set up 'ethical' situations that are only truly ethical in textbooks.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:28 PM on March 8, 2007

Think about how this works in business. Tenants with below-market leases regularly sublease their space to the benefit of themselves, not the landlord. The difference is of course that these tenants don't "live" together as do you and your roommates, but that goes to issues of human compatibility, not equity or ethics.

Issues of human capatability are nothing to sneeze at in this scenario, which relies upon trust in those other people who have keys to your home.

A contract with a sub-leasee has stipulations for how that contract may be broken or negated -- it's a business relationship first. In yeti's scenario, the business relationship is with the landlord, and the relationship between roommates is primarily personal.
posted by desuetude at 6:10 AM on March 9, 2007

As long as you're clear about everyone's obligations, there's nothing at all unethical about taking advantage of changed market conditions.

I think that this thread has nicely illuminated that which room is "worth more" is obviously a matter of opinion and that people tend to think that the grass is greener in the other bedroom.

Those two comments basically sum it up for me. No, there's nothing wrong with letting someone pay whatever money they are willing to pay for the room; it's called the free market. But yes, that person may well resent it. On the third hand, the new roommate may well find something to resent no matter what the rent is; there's no way of predicting. Very few people are truly happy with the rent they're paying, and human nature breeds resentment easily. So I guess the question is, how much money are you prepared to pay (which is what you're doing if you decide not to raise the rent on the new roommate) to make it marginally less likely that the new person will resent you?
posted by languagehat at 6:11 AM on March 9, 2007