What Are The Challenges Of Sharing Your Home With A Tenant?

When there’s a spare room up for grabs in your home, you’ve got the chance to bring in some extra cash that’ll pad out your bank account for years to come. 

After all, if you’re already working a job, or you’ve got a dual income coming into the household already, the money you make here can go into your savings, investments, and even form a very healthy emergency fund for the future! 

However, while the financial payday that awaits you may be pretty marvelous, the reality of living with a stranger can get lost along the way. You’re going to be letting someone into your home to use as their own space, and that can mean you bump heads and lock horns on a regular basis. 

You don’t know this person (at least not yet), and you could have very different habits and standards of living. You want to be sure you’ve put some protections in place that let both you and your tenant live peacefully inside your shared home. 

And you need to be ready for the challenges of having a tenant in the room just down the hall from yours now. It’s not something you want to retroactively set the rules on! 

As such, here’s a guide to the challenges you’re most likely to run into and what you can do to head them off from the start.

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Setting Out the Lease Just Right

If you’re bringing a tenant into your home to rent out a spare room, your rental agreement is going to look quite different to a more traditional version that gives someone legal rights over the whole property. 

After all, you’re still living in the house too! It still needs to be at least partially your space. At the same time, you want to be sure that your tenant knows what’s theirs, the level of privacy they’re entitled to, and what they’re going to need to pay for the privilege. 

Really, this is your chance to set out some boundaries around what is OK within your home, and what lines separate your space from your tenant’s space. 

You can use a room rental agreement template as a starting point, but it’s up to you what actually goes into the document regarding these boundaries, rules, and monthly costs. 

And you don’t want to forget any of these sections when you’re drawing up a lease like this. You don’t want to just put down the monthly rent, the utility bill share, and whether or not there’s a curfew you’d like respected. 

You’re going to want to be as detailed as possible about the kind of behavior you expect from your tenant, especially in terms of how clean they need to keep the communal areas. 

Really, try to outline issues such as these:

• What happens if dishes are left to sit in the sink? How long is it OK for them to be there? 
• If you have a living room that everyone can use, are there any requirements to ‘book’ use of it, especially if the person wants to have guests round? 
• Do you want to have a heads up about whether or not a tenant is going to be away for the night? 

Finding Differences in the Way You Use Your Home

Your tenant might be an earlier riser than you are. They could also be someone who goes to bed later than you do – and sometimes, much later. 

That could mean they have their lights on for longer, and depending on how much this light spreads, you could end up having a few disturbed nights. 

Either way, both these situations are likely to mean more noise at sensitive hours. And if you’re trying to get your beauty sleep, that could require you to invest in some hardy earplugs for bedtime!

And this is just one example of how differently you and your tenant might use the same space. There are a multitude of other ways you can differ, and some may even be more frustrating than bangs and creaks early in the morning!

Bringing Up a Problem When You’re Face to Face

Say you need to ask about an overdue rent payment. Maybe it’s been 24 to 36 hours after the deadline, and you’re getting a bit worried about whether or not it’s going to be paid at all. 

But seeing as your tenant is usually very prompt with payment, you also don’t want to bring this up in a confrontational way. 

And that’s the kind of thing that can make this dual living situation feel a bit awkward. You need to be both a landlord and a housemate at the same time! 

It’s hard to do that in general, but especially when you’re usually perfectly cordial with one another, and now have a problem you need to talk about. You don’t want to chase them up unfairly, but you also need to remember your responsibilities as a landlord. 

Always keep in mind that the whole reason they’re living in your house is because they’re paying to do so, and you’ve not gotten the payment they’ve agreed to make. 

If need be, message them about it first. This is more casual and a lot more lowkey than walking up to them and asking about it to their face. 

If you end up needing to take the matter further, this also helps to prove that you made multiple contacts with your tenant, and only escalated after a period of unresponsiveness. 

It Can Be Challenging to Share a Home with Your Tenant

You should be able to settle into a rhythm with each other, as you’re both living separate lives within the same household. But before you get to that point, you’ll probably run into a few challenges along the way! 

So, keep in mind that preparing for these issues is what really helps, as you can outline the basic rules and expectations in the lease agreement long before your tenant actually moves in.

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Laura

Welcome! I'm Laura, the founder and creative heart of Crazy Laura. After years of honing my skills in crafting, cooking, and decorating, I launched this site to be your trusted resource for creative living. My mission is to provide you with clear, easy-to-follow tutorials and thoughtfully designed printables that empower you to create with confidence.

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