[a_dime]

So I need to know what is a fair way to divive a 2 bedroom house between 3 people. My cousin and her boyfriend will share the master bedroom and I will take the smaller room with separate bathroom. Our rent is $1300 and I will be paying $650 and they (as a couple) will be paying $650, is this fair? I am taking the smaller room, and paying half the rent, shouldn't $1300 be split into 3? Please help!

[smoothy]

Being they are a couple I would split it three ways...

Utilities should be split three ways as they will be higher with a third person. I would not stand for having the small room AND paying half of everything.

Split three ways it would be fair for them to have the larger room.

[Trisha979]

I think rent should be paid by every adult living there. So yes split it three ways

[ScottGem]

A 3-way split would be fairer then half and half. But if you want to do it right you will figure the total square footage of the house. You will then total the common areas (living room, kitchen etc) and divide that by half. Then add the private areas and divide by the total sq footage. This will give you a percentage that you can apply to the rent and utilities.

[smoothy]

A 3-way split would be fairer then half and half. But if you want to do it right you will figure the total square footage of the house. You will then total the common areas (living room, kitchen etc) and divide that by half. Then add the private areas and divide by the total sq footage. This will give you a percentage that you can apply to the rent and utilities.

I think that works best on the rent part, we have done something similar before I got married and had roomates. A lot of townhouses don't have equal size bedrooms and that was the only fair way to divide it up without it appearing the one with the biggest bedroom wasn't getting over, and the one with the smallest one wasn't getting the shaft.. . but utilities should be a three way split. Everyone's use of utilities is independent of the size of their room. We didn't sweat over the common areas as everyone had acess to and full use of those as they were shared.


We simply added the Square footage of the bedrooms together, then figured out what percentage of that total each bedroom had... and that was the percentage of the actual rent that was paid by who occupied that room. In my case it was always three rooms and three people, so the utilities always split 3 ways. Gets tricky when you have a couple sharing a room. In one aspect... the straight percentage for rent works fine if they split... everyones rent remains the same, except the person splitting the room picks up the full tab. Obviously the utilities would vary... but they will.

On a straight three way split everyone's rent would vary... but then the person with the large room would be paying the same as the one with the small room which would not be fair for an even three way split if it ever became a simple two way split.