How should we split rent fairly in a four-bedroom student house?

[Kopfkino]

Can anyone give us some ideas of how to split the accommodation costs of a shared uni house.

House, 4 bedrooms;
1 large bedroom with ensuite (20m sq)
1 large bedroom (20m sq)
2 bedrooms (10 m sq each)

Shared kitchen/ diner, garden, bathroom

Rent is £3466 a month

Some differences of opinion of how this should be split including biggest room paying double!

Any ideas?

£800 for each smaller room, £900 large room, £966 for large with en suite.

There needs to be a difference but shouldn't be literally double as all have equal access to communal areas.

Everyone pays the same, and you pull names out of a hat as to who chooses first, second, etc. We did it that way.

Agree the price of each room together then pull names from a hat as to the order of choice- people are unlikely to put all the costs onto one room when they might be the one paying for it #veilofignorance

It's fair that the biggest room costs the most but they all have the same access to communal areas so it definitely shouldn't be twice the price.

1 large bedroom with ensuite (20m sq)
1 large bedroom (20m sq)
2 bedrooms (10 m sq each)

Rent is £3466 a month

ensuite most expensive
large double next step down and 2 smaller bedrooms cheaper

if it was equal cost it would be £866.5

Id add on extra £65 for the added square meters and £50 for the ensuite per month

so the master bedroom pays an extra £115 per month bedroom 2 pays and extra £65 per month

so 4 and 5 pay £825
bedroom ensuite pays £940
bedroom 2 pays £890

Same for my kids and it’s what we did too at uni back in the day.

It sounds as though you think your DS should have dibs on the best room, but not pay for the much better facilies. That's not fair.

Either each room is priced the same, and draw straws so that everyone has an equal chance of the best rooms, or the rooms are priced relative to their size/facilities and you pay more if you want more.

Similar happened with my DD. Their first uni house they felt the fairest way was to draw straws with room numbers on. My DD got the smallest room. She wasn't bothered. They all paid the same. Year 2 and 3 it was agreed that DD got the biggest room. Again, the rent was shared equally. They all had double beds and spent most of their time in shared areas anyway so all thought this was fair.

The en-suite is a bit of a dilemma though as that will be much better to have your own bathroom. Could the student who has the bathroom not share it with one other so it's then 2 to a bathroom?

Mine too, unless all four had clear wishes so everyone was happy.

My DC ‘drew’ the second largest, was delighted to begin with….then freezing throughout the winter!

HMO’s where rooms are rented individually would be priced differently by size/facility but this doesn’t offer the security of knowing who is in each room.

It's dependent on context.

It's not like these are professional people who can swallow the cost of a larger room. They basically all have the same very low budget to work with, presumably.

You can either allocate rooms randomly and have them all pay the same amount.

Otherwise I'd expect them to kind of bid between them for the en suite room if some or all of them want it, and work out between them what they'd be willing to pay.

we always just paid the same regardless of room size. Screw moving rooms halfway through the year or even every quarter!!

I had exactly this situation at Uni and did the same - I got the smallest room but it turned out well as it was nice and cozy in Winter.

We never spent much time in our rooms anyway.

I like the way everyone is ignoring the fact that a 4 bed student house has an overall rent of £3466pcm!

I suppose whomever gets the largest room automatically becomes lord/lady of the manor, with the smaller en-suite as the sidekick, thus requiring the 2 minions to doff caps on entering said dwelling and as price of admission, wash everyone's dishes for at least the first term.

Therefore, rents can be decided on house hierarchy, with everyone else contributing to the rent of the largest room, leaving lord/lady rent free

allergy warning: some of this reply may contain sarcasm, along with a take on how society generally operates

£1000
£900
£783
£783

This sounds fair

Give over no one will switch rooms half way through the year

@Kopfkino That’s difficult as 2 rooms are much bigger. I think 30,30,20,20 might be fair as all use the shared areas. Then there’s bills. What about that split?

My youngest had the same in her last student rental. The 2 big rooms were +£50, ensuite was +£50 on top of that, rest of the rent was shared by 4.

Two of them wanted cheaper rooms, other 2 didn't care, so they had 2 coin tosses.
They sorted it between themselves. Seemed fair.

Right well if last year they all paid the same no matter the size of the room, why can’t they do the same this year?

Just split the cost evenly and THEN draw who has which room. That’s what I did with my housemates at uni and it worked for us.

If it’s the same group as last year then yes they split the rent equally like they did last year and it makes sense the ones with the worst rooms get to pick their preference this year.

Divide the rent by 60 (sq m) and charge each by the the square meter size of their bedrooms. So the largest bedroom will be 20

• the size of the en-suite. The small ones will be 10 times that rate.

Using rent of 3k as it's easy to split in my head.

Half the house is communal (downstairs) = 1500/4 = 375.50 per person
Upstairs are 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms = 1500/6 = 250 per room.
Shared bathroom is 250/3 = 83.33 between the 3
Ensuite (if exclusive use) = 250
Bedrooms are 230, 230, 260, 280

Ensuite is 375 + 250 + 280
Next biggest is 375 + 83 + 260
Smallest are 375 + 83 + 230

This is assuming they all want the best rooms and will pay more.
If not, then it's draw from a hat and rotate every 3 months.
Biggest can recoup cost by giving access to the ensuite at a price.

We always split it equally - whoever organised the house and sorted it all out admin wise got the first pick of rooms. Everyone else drew a number to pick which room they wanted.

Double seems a bit much. When I was at uni there were 7 bedrooms from big doubled to small singles luckily it accommodated everyone's wishes
. A single isn't normally half proce of a double but probably a good third less compared to ensuite.
Ours worked well as we had already discussed who wants big medium and small.

I would do:

Large en suite: 991.50
Large no en suite: 891.50
2x small no en suite: 791.50 + 791.50

I’m kind of baffled by the prices?? I paid £400 a month as a student and this was less than a decade ago! Who is paying over a grand a month in rent for a room in a student house??