Thinking of getting a lodger - good idea?

[beaniebaby25]

DP and I are thinking of getting in a lodger to help pay off a few debts.

Does anyone have any good experiences with a lodger? I did a quick search through old threads and came across rather a lot of horror stories and wondered if anyone had any positive experiences?

We're thinking of a short term let (3 months) so if it's horrendous we know the end is in sight. Is there anything else we can do to ensure it's a bearable experience? Think we'd prefer a girl, possibly 30s professional. We live in central London so hopefully we should be able to ask a reasonable amount each month.

Or we also considered a Monday-Friday let, giving us the weekends on our own.

Any thoughts? Oh and it's just DP and I, no DCs yet, we live in a two bed (one bathroom) flat...

Hi! WE have had good experiences with lodgers. We also take in foreign language students who study at a local language academy - this is good money too though you have to provide breakfast and dinner.

To get our lodgers we advertised on spareroom.co.uk and had a MASSIVE response. We stipulated ladies only and ovbiously met them first to choose who we liked best.

We only have 1 bathroom and just explained what time we would need it in a morning and asked them to work around it. You also need to give them space in your cupbaords and fridge and bear in mind you may come home to find them cooking in your kitchen or even having friends over for dinner! Plus, you can not expect them to stay in their room all the time so they may sit and watch TV with you!

Check out spareroom though as they also have the option for you to specify Mon-Fri lodgers only.

Good luck!

Thanks DrN - just what I wanted to hear! Will check out that website, that's great.

Thanks so much.

Anyone else with other hints n tips?

anyone else?

If you live in Cental London then I would recommend this agency We used them for a year and it worked really well. They only place doctors who have to come to London for courses and such. You can choose to have them for short term (one to three nights) or longer. We tried a longer one and didn't like it as it meant we did not have weekends to ourselves. In the end, we successfully did short one or two night stays during the week only. It worked really well and the money was good. We do have two bathrooms though. I can really recommend them anyway.

May be not a lodger but how about foreign students. I have a friend who does this and it funds their quite exotic holidays each year. The students have been french, german, korean and chinese so far. If for what ever reason they don't fit in you call the school that they are studying with and they pull them out of your home straight away - no questions asked. All you need to do is provide B&B and I think cooking facilities for an evening meal. Oooh and their bedroom of course.

We've had lovely lodgers. One stayed a year, another two. Professional young women, very smartly dressed when they came to see the house always worked out best. The nightmare lodger was scruffy but interesting to talk to, and when she moved in, erm - yeah. Nice girl, but hell to live with in every way - selfish and messy and irritating. I asked her to go after a couple of months. (That's the great thing about lodgers - your home, so you can just decide it isn't working. Only needed to the once.) I will say though - remember they're paying your mortgage, when you get annoyed by stuff? I used to have to sometimes when cleaning the bathroom, for example. Only 1 of our 7 in total was truly pulling all her own weight.

www.spareroom.co.uk worked really well for us.

I have had 2 lodgers in the past, friends of friends, and it's worked out really well.

We had a lodger years ago when DS1 was little, a male student in his 20's, was fine - he's the only lodger we've had that we didn't already know. He didn't spend much time with us but he was terribly shy. We've also had friends live with us - one male, stayed about six months till he negotiated moving back into his own flat and his exGF moved out, another a young woman and her 1 year old son, who moved in temporarily and ended up staying two years, including a house-move! That was all in a two double bedroom, one single bedroom flat with one bathroom (and no shower!) It was an older property, so the rooms were all a decent size.

When we bought another house, it was much bigger, to give the mother and son (and us) the space and privacy. Also have a lodger atm, DS2's 18-year old friend who has fallen out with his parents, but we live in a stupidly big house. Again, he's no bother (much to his DSD's astonishment ).

The "kitchen issue" could have been a problem with the female friend, but she was working silly hours while I cared for her son, and was just glad of a ready-cooked meal when she got home! (I'm a bit possessive about my kitchen.)

My friend became our lodger. Initially we were very apprehensive about it, and more so as she is a friend. But it worked out well, partly due to the configuration of our place - the guest room and bathroom were situated away from the rest of the family rooms, meaning substantial privacy for all.

Also, my friend was single and a hard-working professional. She was focussed in her career and knew that her time in London was mainly for her CV. She had to travel quite a lot on work so was away quite often as well.

I would recommend looking someone with similar personal/work background.