Years ago I owned a house for a little while. It started out in the 50s as a small two bedroom and then over the years someone finished the attic as a legally conforming bedroom, then finished the basement and put the teeniest bedroom in it. Smallest house with four legal bedrooms I have ever seen.
I rented out the spare bedrooms. I was a landlord. No excuses.
But if I ever found myself in that situation again; How can I ethically share the costs of a house if it has an owner? I couldn't figure it out then. I don't think the situation will ever come up again. But I desperately want some kind of absolution in knowing if I could have done better, and how to implement that if it happens again.
The problem I couldn't figure out was how to give the renters some kind of equity. I didn't have trusted friends I could set up some kind of coop with. Setting up a coop with strangers was very high-risk; I have a severe mental illness and i'm disabled most of the time, so if things went badly I would be in an extremely vulnerable position with few options.
Give me some input. A rich uncle you didn't know you had leaves you a small house with four bedrooms in their will. You can't afford the mortgage without some help. What do you do? How do you work around mortgages and ownership?
sharing a house with someone is the lowest form of landlordism. many people don't really WANT to do it, but they have to.
i lived with a very close friend in his house for like 4 years. We had an apartment before the house. He literally only charged me half the mortgage and didnt fleece me or anything. I knew what the mortgage was too. He didnt make me sign a lease either cause we trust each other and have known each other since elementary school.
You could take the mortgage and charge them per square foot since the rooms are different sizes. My friends house had 4 "bedrooms" but 1 of them was hilariously small and another wasnt much bigger than that.
So in the end, i only paid like $300-$400 a month which is a great deal and honestly i didnt care about any sort of equity deal, even though both of us are leftists. The house rent was cheaper than our apartment was too. I honestly wouldnt worry about an equity deal if youre charging them less than half the mortgage, and i especially wouldnt worry about it if they are a close friend. Doing some kind of equity deal, especially with strangers, is too complicated to worry about. And most people won't give a fuck if the rent is dirt cheap.
A lot of this depends on your financial situation and whether you have the house paid off too, and how much you trust the people living in your house. If the house is paid off, or you can pay most of the mortgage yourself you could set some of the money aside and do a reverse deposit when they move out aka give them some of the money back when they leave. That would look even more awesome if you didnt charge a deposit in the first place.
also if it was a rich uncle i would think that maybe the house is paid off?