Advice for Renting a Room to a Lodger

If you own a house and have a spare room renting this room out to a lodger can be a good way to help pay for your monthly mortgage interest repayments. To get the most from renting a room, it is worth bearing in mind these points.

1. Meet the Person. Before renting a room, always try to meet the person. Even through a short introductory meeting you can get a feeling for whether you would get on with the person. At this introductory meeting it is also a chance to ask relevant questions such as do they work, do they come in late e.t.c. If you rent a room to somebody you have not met it can become quite awkward if you realise you are not going to get on.

2. Set Clear Ground Rules from the start. If you don’t want a lodger to have people stay overnight in their room, you can say so at the outset. Although many young people would not like this rule, there will be some people who are quite happy.

3. Be tolerant of small things. If your lodger has habits of leaving a light on, I tend to leave it. True it is costing a small amount of electricity, but when compared to the income from renting, I feel it is insignificant. If you are constantly enforcing small rules like that it makes it less harmonious to live with someone.

4. Sign a written agreement. You can get a sample contract agreement online. It might be worth paying to get 1 sample and then use it for future use. Verbal agreements cannot be relied on in legal terms. It is important to sign a written agreement with stipulation of monthly income, and how much notice is required to break the agreement on either side.

5. Advertise in the best Places. Often the best place is an online. Just google a search like “renting your town” If you get a lot of enquiries it puts you into the position of being able to choose somebody you think you will get on with rather than having to take anybody.

6. Choose Correct Rent Look carefully at the market rent and try to judge a fair market value. If you are too greedy then it will become difficult to fill the room and you may lose rent money through not being able to get a tenant. However at the same time you don’t want to undervalue the rentable income of your room.

If you are able to find a good tenant you will get both income and the chance to make a new friend. In conclusion it is worth stressing thought that the people you live with have a big effect on your quality of life so it is always worth waiting for a suitable person to move in.

Richard Pettinger studied PPE at Oxford University and now works as an Economics teacher. He contibutes articles on the UK Housing Market and the UK Economy to http://www.mortgageguideuk.co.uk/blog.html Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Pettinger Find More : room renting rent a room renting a room