How to split the rent on an NYC apartment?

July 8, 2020 2:49 PM

My bf and I are discussing how to split the rent on an apartment. One of us will be using an office in the apartment. What makes sense?

We have a one-bedroom apartment with an office, in Brooklyn, New York. Rent is $2,200. One person works from home and uses the office to work from. The other shared space is a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and back yard.

Do you think we should split the rent evenly, or the person using the office pay more?
If the person using the office should pay more, how would the rent be split?

posted by andoatnp to Home & Garden (30 answers total)

Do you both make the same salary? (And have the same amount of background monetary assets coming in, like if one person has huge student loans or debt and the other doesn’t then those things might need to be taken into account)
posted by tangaroo at 2:58 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: The person using the office makes about three times as much as the other person.
posted by andoatnp at 2:59 PM on July 8, 2020

As I understand, you already intend to share every room in this apartment except for the office. Are you absolutely certain that only one person will ever use the office and that the other person will never want to use it? If I were the person not using the office, and I was paying less in rent specifically because I wasn't using it, I might feel uncomfortable about the fact that there is a place in my own home that I'm "not supposed" to enter. On the other hand, if I was paying the same amount of rent as my roommate, I might be more willing to stay out of the office because it's a favor I'm doing for my roommate of my own free will. If I were in this situation, I think I would rather pay half the rent, or more generally, I would not want to let the office affect how the rent was split up.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:05 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

You should split the rent in roughly the same ratio as your earnings.
posted by corvine at 3:06 PM on July 8, 2020 [65 favorites]

Response by poster: Are you absolutely certain that only one person will ever use the office and that the other person will never want to use it?

One person uses the home office 8-10 hours per day, on weekdays. The other person will likely use the office as a workspace 1-2 hours per month.
posted by andoatnp at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2020

What would the rent be on a comparable 1br with no office? The office-user should make up that difference for sure.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

Thinking over my answer again, I think it depends on the fact that you are personally close to your roommate. If my roommate were a stranger, I would rather insist that whoever is using the office in order to make money should certainly pay for the privilege.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2020

What my husband and I have always done was each of us put X% (the same X%, so 30 or 50 or 70%, whatever it takes to cover cost of living) of our after-tax income into a central fund, and that fund pays out for rent, utilities, and certain other household costs. That way the person making more money IS paying in more in dollars, but is taking on the same proportion of burden as the person making less - and that seems plenty fair if the person using the extra square footage is the person who is paying more into the central fund. (Were the situation reversed, I would say that it's slightly more "unfair" but one of the things you do in a long-term relationship is support each other toward success, so as long as nobody feels horribly put off or thinks that space is being used frivolously it's the right thing to do.)

If this was a roommate situation I would be more inclined to calculate office space + bedroom space as "private space" and the office user would pay more or trade off for a smaller bedroom or maybe both, depending on square footage involved.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

If one person makes significantly more than the other, it makes sense for that person to pay more of the rent. Personally I think this is more important than whether one person uses more of the space, although that may strengthen the argument for why that person should contribute more. There may be exceptions to this if the person who makes more also has more financial responsibilities/debt. So if I were you I would consider not just income, but how much of each person's monthly income can be allocated towards living and other expenses.
posted by DTMFA at 3:10 PM on July 8, 2020 [13 favorites]

Split the rent and have the "bf" (boyfriend? best friend?) pay for the upgraded high-speed internet they will most likely want for working from home.
posted by niicholas at 3:12 PM on July 8, 2020

Not to abuse the edit window: my answer is based on the assumption that this is your partner. If they were a roommate, my answer would be different.
posted by DTMFA at 3:12 PM on July 8, 2020

Response by poster: Yes, bf is boyfriend.
posted by andoatnp at 3:15 PM on July 8, 2020

Person A, who is using the office, is also the person who makes 3x more, right? They should use the office as an excuse to pay a larger share of the rent, if the partner who makes less is uncomfortable with an uneven split.

Like, you're not roommates. The person who makes more should pay more regardless of the office. The person who makes less should pay the amount that they can pay without incurring considerable hardship, and the other person should pay the rest. Or I like Lyn Never's solution for the math.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 3:21 PM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

I feel like a 1-bedroom with an office is essentially a 2-bedroom? I get that maybe an office doesn't have a window or a closet or something but basically this sounds like you share the bedroom and bf uses the office So I'd either

1. Find a way for you to also use the office by having half of it be a craft room, computer room, gaming room, whatever, for you
2. Have them pay more for the place based on square footage of the space that is just "theirs"

This is before the other "He makes 3x what you make" aspect. So then when you get to that, it matters, to me, but it might not matter to you. This is a thing that is often tricky for couples and some of it really depends on how you each envision the money situation working out. Like some people with a lot of money coming in also have a lot of debt. Some don't. Some people may be supporting or helping out other family members, some don't. Some people may be getting helped by family members and some aren't. So I think it's worth putting it all on the table and having a discussion about fair rent in a NO OFFICE situation to help you then have a conversation about how the office changes that. And be on the look out for red flag situations because if a boyfriend is making three times as much AND has the office and wants to split things down the middle, in my world, that would be something to be concerned about, in my world.
posted by jessamyn at 3:23 PM on July 8, 2020 [18 favorites]

I agree: if this is your boyfriend, you should split the rent (and other shared expenses) according to the ratio of your earnings - or even better, the ratio of your disposable income left over after student loan payments, health insurance, and other unavoidable expenses. If he makes three times as much as you do, then he should be paying three times as much as you do. This applies regardless of who will be using which space.

A healthy live-in relationship is one that treats money matters as part of the relationship, just like every other aspect of your lives. And most healthy live-in relationships work like communism (to each according to their need, from each according to their ability). The hungrier person will eat more than half of the pizza. The starfish sleeper will take up more than half the bed. The taller person will use the higher shelves. The better cook will wash fewer dishes.

But when it comes to money, you're supposed to amputate it from the relationship entirely? IMO a live-in partner who demands that money - and only money - should be handled as if you both are total strangers to each other is throwing up a massive red flag. It's often considered a precursor to abuse.

And if your living arrangements are such that you must stretch yourself thin to afford your half of the shared space and shared expenses but he is able to comfortably sock away a lot of money every month? That's outright abusive to you. You would be much better off living in a cheaper apartment with an actual roommate while dating him, instead of living with him in a more expensive place which you are essentially subsidizing for him.
posted by MiraK at 3:45 PM on July 8, 2020 [23 favorites]

I live with my partner in a one bedroom + office, and I am both the majority (but not sole) user of the office and the primary earner. My income is >3X my partner's, but my monthly "working" budget (what I actually live on) is exactly 3X my partner's take-home salary. She has student loans, I don't.

I pay 96.7% of our rent. The nominal rent my partner pays is equal to the increase my landlord applied when she moved in, and is basically so that my partner feels she's contributing at least a bit. I think this is entirely fair, because I was paying this rent independently before she moved in, and I was planning to continue paying it independently if I continued to live alone. I also think this is entirely fair because we have structured how we pay our bills so that we each have an approximately similar amount of discretionary money to spend on nonsense once we've paid the bills and bought the groceries.

IMHO, I would be an absolute asshole if I expected her to pay even an income-proportionate amount of the rent on the shared square footage of this apartment or whatever complicated algebra I could come up with to negotiate with a roommate, because it would leave me with tons of disposable income and her struggling to make ends meet. And what kind of asshole would want the person they love to live under that stress?
posted by amelioration at 3:45 PM on July 8, 2020 [43 favorites]

You should split the rent proportionally to your abilities to pay.
posted by batter_my_heart at 4:40 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Will the bf be taking a home office deduction on his taxes?
posted by amanda at 4:55 PM on July 8, 2020

agree with most, that the office use is of less importance than the earning disparity, but in this case it actually gets to the same result:

You have two rooms, he uses half of one and all of the other, so he uses 3/4 of the space
He also earns 3x what you do, i.e. for every $400 you guys have, you earn $100 and he makes $300, so he brings in 3/4 of the money

He pays 3/4 of the rent.
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:05 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

I think it's worth mentioning the OP didn't specify which individual is using the office/earning more, just that one person between the two of them falls into that category.
posted by Goblin Barbarian at 5:09 PM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Here's an alternative way to think about it: you're presumably paying higher rent than you would be for an equivalent place without the extra office, right? The person not using the office can be reasonably asked to pay half of the estimated "no-office equivalent" rent; then the other person pays the other half of that and the entire office rent surcharge.
posted by kickingtheground at 5:14 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

It sounds like at least one of you already lives in this apartment, versus both of you moving into a new one together -- is this a conversation where one partner is moving into the existing apartment, and now the question is how you'll split the rent between the two of you? Or have you already been living together in this apartment, and this is a "this isn't working and we need to renegotiate" conversation?
posted by littlemisslaika at 5:14 PM on July 8, 2020

I think starting by deducting the cost of the office compared to a comparable 1BR is a good starting point.

How you split up the rest is highly dependent on your relationship. If this is the type of unit that the lower income person would rent regardless of their partner, the higher earner may feel that it's reasonable to go 50/50 on the 1BR portion of the apartment. If the higher earner is pushing for a pricier neighborhood or unit than the lower earner would go for on their own, the higher earner should should pay more. Depending on how close your relationship is or how the higher earner feels about money, they may want to pay more. Things like division of domestic chores may also come into play as far as who pays what.

IMO a live-in partner who demands that money - and only money - should be handled as if you both are total strangers to each other is throwing up a massive red flag. It's often considered a precursor to abuse.

Being in a relationship with someone where you're at the living together stage but not married does not entitle you to their income. If they're inflating your lifestyle, yeah, at that point they have the responsibility to cover more.

There's happy and healthy couples that even in marriage prefer to keep separate bank accounts and go halves on everything that's shared.

Will the bf be taking a home office deduction on his taxes?

You can now only do this if you're self-employed.

You have two rooms, he uses half of one and all of the other, so he uses 3/4 of the space

There's not two rooms, there's four rooms plus the yard.
posted by Candleman at 5:23 PM on July 8, 2020

One way to do this is to create a chart: all money coming in, all money going out on an annual basis. Unless one person has debts that really should be solely their own (pre-relationship student loans, child support, remittance to family) divide the amounts equally between the two people. After balancing the debts against income there should be an amount left over. Divide that amount into twelve, and then divide into two. That left-over amount of money is the amount you should each keep from your paycheques, the rest goes to the bills (one of which should be a joint saving account for emergencies). This means the higher earner will be paying more both in real dollars and proportionately, which works out nicely with them also use more of the space.

If you aren’t acting as a joint economic unit, as well as a romantic one, you should be getting legal advice on protecting both of you. Good for you on having these tough conversations. We have been socialised to not discuss money in relationship, which breeds a lot of resentment from unspoken assumptions, or poverty for one person on relationship breakdown.
posted by saucysault at 5:27 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

splitting the rent equally with someone who gets two bedrooms to your one would be kind of wild. actually they get one-and-a-half to your one-half, right? so counting by halves, that's three to one. most crucially, they have a private space with a door on it that's all theirs, almost all the time, and you don't, you have no room of your own. huge, huge advantage/privilege that counts for more than any amount of shared space.

so

if you look at this as roommates: you pay one quarter, they pay three quarters. split by the bedrooms.

if you look at this as committed lifetime partners: they pay three-quarters, you pay one quarter, proportional to income, changing as your incomes may change.

if you look at this as a person with any sense of self preservation: you make sure if your name's on the lease, you can handle all of the rent if they vanish. that means, if you can't afford it all on your income only, you hold the line hard on a fair rent split, and you put lots of money away in savings.

if you are the office-user, not them, then reverse yous & theys as applicable.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:35 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I wouldn't factor the office into whatever expense-sharing system you two otherwise use, because even though only one person is WORKING in the office, the other person is still benefiting from it. I would be overjoyed not to have to combine mine or my partner's work paraphernalia with the rest of the household stuff and as a Brooklynite myself would consider any additional square footage a blessing to be mutually treasured, not to nickle and dime over. If you're both home during quar, too, any kind of privacy, quiet, separation — idk, being able to futz around in the kitchen or watch TV or do one's own work from the couch or whatever, that's a boon for everyone.
posted by Charity Garfein at 7:59 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

You should split it half and half, you are a team. The fact that one person makes money at home doesn't incur cost, but it should lead to benefits (i.e. they should fund things y'all do with your moneys). That said, I'm old and married, IDFK.
posted by so fucking future at 8:15 PM on July 8, 2020

My husband and I are in the same situation. We have a three bedroom apartment. He works from home and makes more. We split the rent 40/60 and he pays for the internet. Our cost breakdown is reflective of our relative incomes, not who is using what square footage. I started working from home in March due to covid and do not yet have a timeline for returning to the office. We haven’t changed our respective rent amounts even though I am also now using a room for my office.
posted by kate blank at 4:20 AM on July 9, 2020

Splitting half and half doesn't make sense. Imagine one person is a stay at home parent and has no income... they still owe for half the rent? I would ignore the office thing and split proportional to income.
posted by Grither at 7:25 AM on July 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

I also think that the office is immaterial, but you should split the rent in proportion to income.
posted by desuetude at 8:23 AM on July 9, 2020