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You are here: Home / Archives for renting rooms

What Are Boarding Houses?

July 26, 2016 By Landlord Education

And Is a Boarding House For You?

What are Boarding Houses and Rooming HousesI have a lot of people stop by looking for information about boarding houses, room rentals and rooming houses. It seems people are interested in short term rental properties as a way to earn extra income or to turn an under performing property into an asset that cash flows.

The extra income was the original ticket for me.

I bought my first rooming house with three rooms in 2004, hated it and wanted to shut it down within the first few months. That wasn’t an option, so I modified the original premise to what I can only say was an even better model.

Then within three years I ended up owning nine more rooming properties with 53 rooms that each rented in a range of $150-190 per week.

If you can quickly do the math on that you might understand why I grew it so quick!

Anyway, I’m wondering off the main point of this article, so let’s get back on track  by explaining more about boarding house properties and how they fit in the market.

Boarding Houses

Room and Board Properties - Boarding houses date back hundreds of years and come in a variety of different types and options. Predominately the idea of a boarding house is a property that it includes a room and board . With board being meals and often including services like laundry and cleaning.

My first experience with this was actually with my grandmother. She was a widow and rented out two rooms in her three bedroom home to local workers and provided them evening meals and laundry service.

These two sources of income helped her make ends meet and helped keep her busy as she loved taking care of people. It was a perfect fit for her!

Over the years you’ve probably seen other examples in movies and books without even being aware of what you were looking at.

Boarding Houses – The Original AirBnB

From Sherlock Holmes 221B address being a boarding house to George Bailey’s mothers boarding house seen in it’s a Wonderful Life to more recently in the film Brooklyn where Eilis lives in a boarding house.

Of course all these examples tend to be from previous eras where this was much more common. People tended to be more transient years ago and often followed work and needed cost effective places to stay. Even though things have changed and boarding houses aren’t quite as common, they do still exist and may be a perfect fit for some people.

If you don’t mind sharing your home, enjoy cooking meals and possibly providing cleaning or laundry services (which can be an additional charge). Operating a boarding house style property may be the perfect method to help you make ends meet and put some bonus cash in your pocket.

It just requires a spare bedroom (or two), enjoying having people around and most importantly ensuring you have a solid set of rules in place.

Variations of boarding houses include Bed and Breakfast setups, hosting foreign students and even AirBNB properties and even combinations of these options.

Just in my little circle of friends and relatives I see examples of this every day. My sister-in-law runs a successful Bed & Breakfast, a friend of mine rents out two rooms in her home, one to a foreign student and the other on six months terms. My cousin rents out a room in his home and we have friends who bring in foreign students for eight months at a time.

I even have an acquaintance who helps people convert their vacant rentals into AirBNB spaces.

The important part of any of these though is understanding any local regulations, laws and possibly even zoning that could come into play.

With a single room rented out to help make ends meet, it might be just fine, it might fly under the radar of any by-laws or zoning and be ideal for you.

Once you expand to a full fledged B&B though, or rent out multiple rooms as a full fledged business it can expand into a litany of paperwork and processes to legally operate.

Renting Out Rooms

Room Rentals for ProfitThe majority of my experience with these types of properties involves renting out furnished rooms in a home where the tenants are responsible for cooking their own meals, their own laundry and even their own cleaning (or at least most of the time).

From higher end properties targeting business people, tourists and more upscale clients to mid to lower end properties targeting trades people, individuals caught between places and even simply folks down on their luck, rooms were great for me.

They became a bit of a cash cow for me and helped create significant monthly income for us, but I’ve already written about that previously. If you’d like to find out more, check out this article,

Profiting from Renting Out Rooms and Boarding Houses

Or, if you would like handy tips on how to run your own rooming house, be sure to check this out,

Get My 5 Best Rooming House Tips via email

Or, if you’d like to learn about the Ultimate Mortgage helper,

Renting Out Rooms In Your Home

Here’s are my thoughts on what every rooming house owner should know,

What A Rooming House Owner Needs To Know

And finally, if you’d like to learn more about how, where and the basics of locations for setting up your own rooming house,

The Basics of Starting Your Own Rooming House

What are your thoughts on rooming houses, or did you even know they existed? Leave a comment below!

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Filed Under: Investing In Rental Real Estate, Rooming Houses Tagged With: boarding houses, rental cash flow, renting rooms, rooming house

Renting Out Rooms In Your Home

January 14, 2015 By Landlord Education

The Ultimate Mortgage Helper
Renting Out Rooms

running a rooming house - renting out roomsWould an extra $400 or $500 a month go a long ways towards helping you make ends meet? Have you thought about renting out rooms in your home?

Looking for a method to get your house paid off faster without having to change your spending habits? Do you simply have too much space in your home that could be used to generate cash? These could be signs that renting out rooms might work for you.

Or maybe not, as this isn’t for everyone! But there are thousands of people using this tactic to help them get by, to increase their cash flow and to get their homes paid off quicker.

If you’re outgoing and enjoy meeting new people, this could be awesome. If you like your own space and like having your friends over and staying up late, maybe not. It’s not for everyone, but if you can make it work for you for a couple years it can be an incredible option.

The Caveats

First off, you’re letting a stranger into your home. While this can be offset by thoroughly screening the tenant (if you intend to go this route, be sure to take my Educated Landlord Tenant Screening Course), there’s no guarantee you will get along with them.

You could also offset this by renting the room to a friend or family member, but this can open a whole new set of issues. It’s one thing evicting a stranger for non-payment of rent, but it can make family Christmas dinners a tad awkward when you have to kick out cousin Jimmy for the same reason.

Second, you will need to be very familiar with the local rules for renting out space in your home. Do you fit under the local landlord laws, or a subset of the laws? In my region if the landlord lives int he property and shares common space with the tenant like living rooms, kitchens and bathrooms they fit under different legislation which is much more in favor of the landlord.

Knowing the difference can change how and what you can do with problem tenants and this can definitely take stress off of you knowing the law is on your side!

Third, your boundaries may feel restricted. Now it’s not just your space, but common space. If you’re used to just leaving your clothes or dishes lying around, you will be setting the standards for the house.

You can’t expect your tenants to follow the rules you set if you can’t live within the same boundaries.

If you found this article about renting rooms interesting, you’ll also enjoy these

Profiting From Renting Out Rooms

Renting Out Rooms In Properties

I’ll also have some upcoming courses on how to set up a rooming house, run a rooming house and even analyzing a property to see if it works






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Filed Under: Landlord Information, Rooming Houses Tagged With: dealing with tenants, renting rooms, room rentals, rooming house

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