Nieces/nephews as lodgers

[2cupsofcoffee]

Was following an earlier thread with interest this weekend, the one where the op was thinking of asking her sister to take her daughter in as a lodger.
If you were to agree to a niece or nephew lodging with you while in college, or starting their first job, can I ask what your house rules would be?

The same as they would be for my dc, which is basically to respect the fact that other people live here.
Basic courtesies about things like tidying up after yourself, letting us know if you aren't coming home, etc.
If I was happy to let any of them live with me, then I'd know they were nice dc anyway, so wouldn't need a rule book

Oh god I have my 18 year old nephew! Love him to bits but boy it's a pain in the arse!
He was 16 nearly 17 when he arrived and attending college but he's now working so no end in sight at the moment!
We don't really have any house rules, he's a member of the family he doesn't have a girlfriend or anything maybe if he did we would have to come up with some.
He does his own laundry, if he wants to eat anything in particular he buys it himself, he pays £50 per week rent (very recent - so recent I haven't seen it yet)
My husband struggles with it sometimes! 🙁

My DP and I hosted my younger half sister through her last couple of years at high school.

We didn't ever need to set specific rules for her. Parents paid $75AU each week to go towards her food and board. (They gave her money for clothes, school stuff, spending etc when she needed it)

The only rule we really needed to have was that no friends stayed over on school nights, they had to leave by 10pm (unless there was something special happening the next day etc).

It was quite easy having her, we never felt like we needed to set more rules - it just worked out that way.

The same as for any other (non-family) lodger: rent paid on time, house kept clean and tidy, no permanent overnight guests moving in...

Oh, and all negotiations to be done by them, not their parents.

What about having friends over/staying over?

I haven't come up against this yet! He's had a college friend over to stay if we've been away for company.

I guess as it's his home and he's part of the family it would be ok if it was a 'steady' girlfriend / boyfriend but I wouldn't have him bringing a string of strangers back.

I’d say set ground rules and think about things clearly.

My cousin stayed with us while he was doing his A-levels. My uncle said to my mum he’d help out but in the end he just wrote a letter to my mum saying thankyou. Sounds insignificant but my mum was single raising me and dad did not contribute towards me. She later admitted that having him stay for so long ended up reducing what she was able to spend on us (me and my mum) as cousin was now an extra mouth to feed/support etc.

Have very clear rules.

Specific rules would really depend on the person. I would hope they would be considerate and not bring groups of friends back late at night etc. Not leave a mess, buy more milk if they used it up etc. Take the bins out if they're full. Etc. If they don't do all these things naturally I guess I'd explicitly make them house rules but if they were generally considerate and responsible I'd be fine with occasional friends staying over etc.

I wouldn't do it. My brothers son stayed with my sister and her DP whilst he was at college and fell out with them massively. They had all sorts of rules such as he must sit with them at the dinner table every evening, use of washing machine was timed, oh he doesn't sit with us in living room (as if teens want or have to sit chit chatting and watching TV with their elders!) it was a total nightmare.

& couldn't have been envisaged as my nephew gets on well with her, these requirements weren't mentioned at all before he moved in.