Splitting rent and bills in a student house

The short version

One standing order each, for one all-in figure, into one house account, two or three days after everybody gets paid. Work out that figure once in week one and you have removed almost every money conversation from the rest of the tenancy.

Rent is the only part with real arithmetic in it: split the shared space equally and only the bedrooms by size. Bills go evenly. A small pot covers the things nobody wants to itemize.

The five decisions, all of them in week one

Everything that goes wrong in a shared house in March was left undecided in September. There are five things to settle, and none of them is hard while everybody still likes each other.

• What each room costs. Before anybody unpacks, because a room is much easier to price when nobody is living in it yet.
• Whose name goes on which account. Spread them out. One person holding every account is one person carrying every risk.
• One date, one amount, one account. A standing order, not a monthly reminder that somebody has to send.
• What the house pot covers. Shared staples, nothing else, so it stays a small number nobody audits.
• What happens if somebody leaves. Ten seconds now, and the only decision on this list you will regret skipping.

Rent, when the rooms are not the same

Every house has one big room, one box room over the front door, and three in between. Dividing the rent by five charges the same for all of them, and everybody knows it, which is why this is the conversation people avoid until somebody has already claimed the good room.

The method is two pools. Everyone uses the kitchen, the bathroom and the sofa equally, so that part of the rent divides equally. Only the bedrooms divide by size. How to split rent when the bedrooms aren’t equal has the full arithmetic and the part no formula settles, which is what an ensuite or a missing closet is actually worth.

In the worked house, 560 square feet of shared space against 700 square feet of bedrooms puts $1,222.22 of the rent in the shared pool and $1,527.78 in the bedroom pool. The shared pool is $244.44 each. The bedroom pool runs from $360.12 to $250.99.

The highlighted row is worth a second look. The 140 square foot room pays $623.00, which is exactly what an even split would have charged it. That is not a coincidence: 140 is the average of the five bedrooms, so the room at the average always lands on the even-split figure. An even split is not wrong for that person. It is wrong for the other four, in opposite directions, by $54.57 a month each at the ends.

Bills, and the part nobody reads

Bills go evenly. Room size prices a bedroom, not a router, and nobody uses more hot water because their window is bigger. In the worked house that is $305 a month, which is $61.00 each.

• Electricity and gas, $180. The only line that really moves. Budget on a winter month, not on the August one you sign up in.
• Water, $45. Often billed quarterly, so divide it by three and hold the money rather than being surprised three times a year.
• Broadband, $60. Fixed, and worth checking the contract length against the tenancy before somebody signs an eighteen-month deal on a twelve-month house.
• Contents insurance, $20. Cheap, and the one every house skips until a laptop goes.

Spread the accounts around

Whoever signs up is the person the supplier chases, and what the house agreed between itself does not change that. Five accounts across five people means nobody is carrying the whole house, and it takes no longer than putting them all on one person.

Take a meter reading on day one

Photograph every meter the day you get the keys, with the date visible. It costs a minute and it is the only evidence that the previous tenants’ last two weeks are not on your first bill.

Weight a bill only when you can name the measure

If one person is genuinely away half the term or works from home with the heating on all day, an even split stops being close enough. Splitting utility bills when usage isn’t equal has the occupancy weighting, and the honest caveat that you cannot meter a bedroom, so it is always an agreed proxy rather than a measurement.

Work out your own house

Put in the rent, pace out the shared rooms, and list the bedrooms in square feet. The output is one standing order per person, which is the only number anybody needs to remember for the rest of the year.

The house pot, and what it is not for

Sixty dollars a month, $12 a head, covering the things nobody wants to itemize: oil, salt, cleaning products, trash bags, toilet paper. One person shops, the pot pays, and nobody counts.

The pot should not try to cover food. The moment it does, it has to be big enough for the person who eats the most and it starts being unfair to the person who eats the least, which is the argument the pot existed to prevent. Splitting groceries when people eat differently is the shape that works: shared staples in the pot, personal food on the person.

If you are not sure which method any given cost wants, how to split shared costs fairly is the overview: five methods, when each is right, and how much the choice is worth before you spend an evening on it.

The two things that actually go wrong

Somebody stops paying

It is almost never refusal. It is a missed standing order that nobody notices for six weeks, by which point it is three months of rent and awkward to raise. Check the house account on a fixed day each month, and raise it the first time, when it is one payment and an apology. When someone doesn’t pay you back covers getting to an exact figure and the message that gets it sent.

Somebody leaves early

Deposits, the final bills, and the sofa three people bought together. Agree the principle in week one, in a sentence: whoever leaves finds a replacement, and the last bill is split by days rather than by heads. Closing the books when you move out prices all of it, including the part where the deposit does not come back on the day you leave.

Common questions

Every figure here was produced by running Halvy’s own split engine on the worked example, and the five standing orders reconcile to $3,115.00 a month exactly rather than to within a cent or two. The bill amounts are a plausible five-person household rather than a survey, and what a tenancy agreement or a supplier actually allows is a matter for that contract. Nothing here is legal advice.