Latrines’ Galore

Today we’re talking about some sweet unconventional housing, hardwood floors, and figuring out how much rent each housemate should pay.

Dear Splitwise,

I am trying to arbitrate a living situation for my daughter and want to share some Outhouses Galorethoughts. Your “Splitwise” rent calculator is ingenious! However it may not work as well with unconventional housing. One thing missing from the calculation is the number of bathrooms. This is a drawback as a typical 4 bedroom house might have only two bathrooms so the MBR rent would be much higher due to the exclusive use of the MBR bath. All other tenants and house guests would use the single remaining bath… much less desirable.

Let me try to give you her housing scenario without bias. The house is a modern custom home with 5 huge bedrooms and huge common area. The house has three large full bathrooms and a half bathroom in the common area. The MBR is double occupied with a master bathroom. Two upstairs rooms share the upstairs full bathroom and two downstairs bedrooms share the downstairs full bathroom. So the single occupants essentially have their own rooms and a MBR bathroom quality… Shared with one other person only. Several of the rooms are bigger than the MBR and all rooms are probably enormous.
Without getting into outside doors and windows… How would you divide the rent?

Also… one housemate has insisted that his room should be less because it has hardwood floors while the others are carpeted.

Thanks for your input!

Livin’ Large

Dear LL,

This house sounds amazing! I would have killed for a room in this place when I was renting. My normal set up was a 3 bedroom dump, with one of those bedrooms almost certainly being the size of a closet -which I inevitably always ended up in.

Your rent calculation is actually doable in our rent calculator because the bathroom situation is as amazing as it is. Normally we count the master bathroom as an slight increase in the rent share. This is because the common place bathroom is less desirable to have, due to public usage. In your case, the bathrooms actually cancel each other out. There are 2 people per bathroom in the other 4 rooms, which evens out with the number of people sharing the master bath. You also have that sweet half bath that the house guests will be using, so no one is losing out of personal crapper space.

Using your description of the room sizes, combined with our trusty calculator – it will break down like this.

  • The couple sharing the master bedroom should pay $1211.54 in total – that’s $605.77 per person.
  • Everyone else should be paying $822.12 a month.

Now about this hardwood floor guy, tell him to stop whining – his flooring preferences don’t have a leg to stand on when trying to factor what his monthly rent would be. Flooring is a personal preference and something that can be worked out with the other roommates (tell him this magical thing called “communication”). If no one wants it, then everyone can draw straws to see who gets the room with the hardwood floors.

~Splitwise

If you have a fairness or money sharing etiquette question you’d like Splitwise to address anonymously for you, email Dear Splitwise at ask@splitwise.com.

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