Splitting the rent between you, me and Dupree

June 17, 2010 9:55 PM

What is the best way of splitting the rent for a 2 bedroom place where a couple share one room and a single shares the other?
posted by teem to Work & Money (25 answers total)

In every shared living situation I've been in, you pay for your bedroom, based on relative size, regardless of how many share it.
posted by Sparx at 9:58 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

3 ways. You're not just paying for a bedroom. You're paying to live there. If three people are living there, 3 people should pay equally.
posted by geekhorde at 10:02 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

The rent should be split based on the number of bedrooms, or if they are of really unequal sizes, in proportion to the square footage. I can see arguments for splitting utilities either by bedroom or by roommate, but that decision would be dependent on the specific facts of the apartment, what utilities are included and what isn't, etc.
posted by ambrosia at 10:05 PM on June 17, 2010

When I've shared space, each person living in the space paid an equal amount of rent, regardless of their sexual partner, bedroom size, etc. Some of my friends who live in weirdly-shaped buildings do skew the percentages of rent based on bedroom size, but only when the bedrooms are wildly different sizes (one bedroom is 300 sq ft and the other is 50!, etc.). They're all one to a bedroom, though.
posted by shamash at 10:07 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

The problem with splitting it by the number of people, is what happens if the couple breaks up and one person leaves? Then the other roommate gets hit with a rent increase? That seems like a tough pill to swallow.
posted by ambrosia at 10:08 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

30-30-40 (or thereabouts), unless there are two bathrooms. The single person is sharing common space with more people.
posted by jeather at 10:11 PM on June 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

As a rough starting point, 30-30-40, as jeather said above.

A flat or house is not just the bedrooms. The kitchen would be shared by all, and presumably also the living room, possibly the bathroom, and any other common areas (balcony, garden, laundry, linen closets, hallways, etc).

Not to mention that the single person should be compensated for the fact that the couple will tend to form a voting bloc on things like what TV program to watch, how much heating or aircon to use, and couples almost always make more mess & tend to monopolise the kitchen more than any single person.
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:20 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Previously.

There was no consensus in that thread, but the three basic options are: by room, by person or a 30-30-40 split (or similar). Ive lived in a couple/single 2 bet and we did the 30-30-40 split. It seems the best compromise between the other two options which ar enever going to be reconciled.
posted by tallus at 10:22 PM on June 17, 2010

Ha - I love the question. I think the correct answer is whatever makes everyone most content. But wait, you cry! It's a theoretical question! Yeah - not so much. I think it'll vary from roommate group to roommate group. I've always done equal shares based on number of bedrooms. So for your situation it would be couple 50% and single 50%. I think now that 30-30-40 is "fairer." But if the couple feels put out by that split, and bitterness and resentment wells up, and first the passive aggressiveness, and then the hidden snakes, and then the ... well you get the idea. And as others have pointed out, what if the single roommate has more guests? Starts dating someone? never goes in the common space and lives solely in his/her room? All this going to be factored in?

Hell, maybe for your group it will be the metafilter consensus that creates the greatest contentment.

Approach it in good faith, try to find a consensus number that everyone is content with, and agree to revisit the split if situations change. If you can't happily come to an arrangement, probably a bad sign...
posted by slide at 10:28 PM on June 17, 2010

You need to factor in facilities use as well. In any event, two people are going to make more of an impact than one when it comes to the following: dicking around in the kitchen, using the bathroom (hot water, tp, etc.), making a mess, sitting on more of the couch, using the washing machine, and so forth. So, yeah, 30-30-40.
posted by turgid dahlia at 10:43 PM on June 17, 2010

Divide the rent by five, and the utilities by three.

The five comes from common areas (you each split equally three ways) and the bedrooms (one pays one, the other two pay one.) The utilities by three is more obvious.

So, rent is $2000 a month (hey, I live in Los Angeles!) and so that's $400 X 2 for you, $400 X 3 for them. Done.
posted by davejay at 10:47 PM on June 17, 2010 [6 favorites]

Oh, and presumably their $1200 ($400 X 3) is split 50/50, but that's not your problem!
posted by davejay at 10:48 PM on June 17, 2010

(I just realized that my math is just 30-30-40. Der.)
posted by davejay at 10:51 PM on June 17, 2010

Depends on the size of the bedrooms, IMHO. I once lived in a four-bedroom house with three others, and my bedroom was the smallest by far. I mean it was tiny. I could fit a single bed in there, and a computer desk and chair, and that was about it. I paid about half the rent as the others, whose rooms were easily double my size.

Utilities, though, are different. Each of you should pay 1/3rd.

The 30-30-40 split seems pretty fair, actually.
posted by zardoz at 11:36 PM on June 17, 2010

All else being equal, I think they each ought to pay 1/3. If I'm in bunk beds with someone I only like as a friend, then I see the argument that I should pay less for my bedroom, in exchange for a less desirable situation. But the couple shacking up already receives the benefit of cheaper rent by having another roommate; why should they pay even less for the added benefit of sharing a bed with their sweetie?

I guess this assumes that they are sharing a bedroom mainly because they wish to, and not doing so in order to save money. I feel like if they're choosing to live together, they'd be sharing a bedroom no matter what, and don't need to be compensated for having "less space" -- unless, for some reason, their shared room were indeed smaller.
posted by emumimic at 12:00 AM on June 18, 2010

I've always gone for the rent based on square footage, utility bills based on number of people approach.
posted by handee at 12:37 AM on June 18, 2010

Divide the rent in half, general house and sleeping quarters. Everyone pays equal share for general house, but the sleeping quarters are split 50/50 between the couple and the solo person.

Total rent is $1000. Say $500 for general house and $500 for sleeping room. So each person pays $166 for general house, the singleton pays $250 for their room, and the couple pays $250 for theirs.

Single: $166 + 250 = 416
couple a: $166 + 125 = 291
couple b: $166 + 125 = 291

I don't know who pays that extra buck.

I guess this is pretty close to 30 - 30 -40, but I thought I'd write it out anyway.
posted by dirtdirt at 4:50 AM on June 18, 2010

I think this has to be negotiated depending on the specific flat, and the people.

For what it's worth, my husband and I have been in a couple + friend share twice, and we have always paid 2/3 of the rent and utilities.

- we used 2/3 of the rest of the house
- the single bedroom was smaller than our double
- I totally claimed the desk in the living room as mine

In the case of two large bedrooms, perhaps a 60-40 split would be equitable. But generally, two people in one bedroom take up as much space in the house as two people, not one.
posted by jb at 5:35 AM on June 18, 2010

Divide by thirds. Who cares if the couple is 'forced" to share one room. they are gonna dominate the place. if it was 2 couples moving in a 2 bdrm it would be half and half.

Why should the single guy have to support the couple by subsidizing their rent?
posted by Max Power at 6:42 AM on June 18, 2010

I've done 50%-50% on rent and thirds on every other kind of bill. I was the single, and I felt that the couple got off easy, but I didn't resent it enough to fight. They did pay a tad bit more for the master bedroom.
posted by jander03 at 7:19 AM on June 18, 2010

What I did in college is take the relative square footage of the individual rooms, arbitrarily pick some portion of the rent to go towards "the common areas" and divide up the rest according to SF-age. I adjusted that first amount until I got a spread of rents that everybody was happy with.

Anecdotally: the year previous with the same group we split it even, which created a lot of animosity (on my end) for one person who had a very private room 2 or 3 times bigger than mine. And one roommate had a boyfriend who practically lived there, and we agreed that it was NOT fair for the roommate to have her rent subsidized 50% while we had to deal with this extra body and his things in our living room, kitchen, and fridge.

It's smart, if uncomfortable, to sit down with the three of you beforehand to talk about it. Also a good opportunity to talk about other ground rules for making it a not-passive-aggressive environment.
posted by ista at 7:43 AM on June 18, 2010

Anecdotal: Lizsterr and I have the larger bedroom and our roommate (for two more weeks, anyway) has the smaller. Total rent is 1100. We split it 700/400. Close enough to de facto thirds (even though we generally monopolize the living room), but symbolically not, I guess. Everyone is pretty happy. We split utilities into straight thirds and keep a running total of who owes whom what so we're not swapping checks every month.
posted by supercres at 8:09 AM on June 18, 2010

You want to acheive this:

1) Everyone pays the same share for the common space
2) The total amount paid for each bedroom is related to its size (and not how many people are in it)

So, let's say it's a two bedroom place. Then you have the total area of the apartment is:

A = A_R1 + A_R2 + A_C

Where the first two are the areas of the bedroom, and A_C is the area of the common spaces (bathroom, kitchen, hallway, etc).

Let's say there are two people in room 1, and one person in room 2 (call them persons x, y, and z). Then

rent_x = rent_y = (rent_total/A)*(A_C/3 + A_R1/2)
rent_z =(rent_total/A)*(A_C/3 + A_R2)

Or, more generally

rent = (total rent / total area)*( (common area)/(total people) + (room area)/(number of people in the room))
posted by molecicco at 8:10 AM on June 18, 2010

Oh yeah, and if you want to get nit-picky, then use the same formula for the heating bill, but just divide the water and electricity evenly (except for lighting, electricity consumption is not related to floorspace).
posted by molecicco at 8:16 AM on June 18, 2010

This is my current living arrangement and has been for a couple of years. We split the rent evenly 3 ways.
posted by divabat at 1:52 AM on June 20, 2010