Hay. I have a house That I moved out of that I am going to turn into a rental. Here is the stitch,
The House is a 3bed 2 bath house with a detached garage apartment. The apartment was a garage that was converted into a small house of about 600sf. I had at one time lived in it till I moved into the main out with my family. When I moved out I rented it out. I have a renter in it right now that pays $500. He uses my utilitys, water, gas and cable tv. He has been excellent for the past 3 years. Helped put me through school.
I moved out and want to rent out the main house however the note is about equal to the going rent and then with taxes and insurance I would be in the negative about $300 so I need to keep the apartment rented.
i am trying to figure out how to get the renter to share the utilitys and stuff. Would it work to give the renter a discount on the rent to share?
He is a mailman that got transfered to my town and is wanting to keep his job. He has a house and family about 100 miles away and goes home on the weekends. He had been previously lived in a hotel for about a year. He has cut his expenses in half renting from us. Always nice to get a check from someone and them smiling as they hand it over.
Anyone heard of this setup with the utilitys and stuff?
sky
Sharing utilities can be tricky. In multifamily quads and such it is not unusual for the owner to pay the water for the whole building. Your rental shares all the utilities. You can try and increase rent to cover the utilities or you could bill back the tenants on a monthly basis based on the actual bill you receive.
Jim
Really your issue is how to either raise the rent or bill the tenant for utilities, when they have been receiving all the utilities for free in the past. I doubt that is going to be easy for you. It will be like raising the rent by $300, or 60%. In fact, that may put the garage apartment out of range for the current renter. There is no way to put this together that will make it more palatable for the tenant.
Assuming you can get past that, you could bill the tenant for his pro rata share of the utilities, perhaps based on the square footage. I have a 3 unit building where I do just that. I pay the water, the 3 tenants divide the gas. They each pay their own electric. It’s been working for years successfully.
Ben
So the idea of giving the renter of the main house a discount on the rent to cover the added cost on there utilities wouldn’t work?
[QUOTE=skylark;886617]So the idea of giving the renter of the main house a discount on the rent to cover the added cost on there utilities wouldn’t work?[/QUOTE]
You want to discount the rent to offset the cost of utilities? Sure, that works for the tenant. Why not? The question is, does that work for you? The way you’ve phrased it above, nothing really changes for either of you financially.
Evidently I’m missing what the problem is. I thought you were trying to get the tenant to cover his share of the utilities.
No I’m just trying to figure out how to rent both with out me having to pay for seperate meeters on everything.The renter in the apartment is paying his part, its just all wrapped up in one payment ans tied to the utilities of the main house. It was fine when I lived in the house. This even helped put me through school. I had thought about renting out rooms in the main house. That may work but I would be in it more.