Split the Rent website offers accurate rent-splitting calculator
Will Brinson
Splitting the rent is a big problem. How much is a bigger bedroom worth? How about a private bathroom? Is it really worth saving $300 a month to live in a closet?
Thankfully, SplitTheRent.org is here to save the day, by providing an easy way to calculate what you should be paying.
The site offers a Rent Calculator which consists of a few basic questions (they’re multiple choice — relax). How many bedrooms are there? How big is each bedroom? Is there a private bath? How big is the common area? And so on.
According to the site, things it “handles really well” include: Unequal room sizes, some room being shared by a couple, up to 8 bedrooms, some rooms have no windows, huge closets, bad sound isolation, private bathrooms, etc.
I ran it on my house, which is a bit weird because we have three roommates and one of them (me) has a much bigger bedroom AND an office — I excluded the office in this case because I pay separate rent based on the square footage of that particular room.
The end result was pretty surprising in terms of accuracy. Our third roommate’s money in, considering he has no “private” common space, was within $5. My brother’s rent was off, but he has a smaller room upstairs that he basically makes his office. And mine was way off, but it doesn’t include the substantial personal office space that I hog each month.
The principles behind the website are pretty simple: it uses user estimations and converts them to square footage and splits the uneven bedroom square footage appropriately. It also adjusts for things that suck (no windows??) or things that are awesome (private bathroom) as well as the square footage of common areas in the house.
If you’re currently hosing your roommate on the rent, you probably don’t want to show them the site, but if you’re someone who’s looking for a roommate to move in and wants to figure out a fair number, or are the roommate moving in and want to make sure you’re not getting dogged, it’s definitely worth your time to get an estimation.
A New Formula for the Rent-Splitting Problem – [Freakonomics]
follow guyism:
Other Stories You Might LIke
Don’t say ‘I don’t have time,’ say ‘It’s not a priority’
6 items all guys should retire after college
Worst post-first date email ever comes from seemingly desperate investment banker
comment on this story
blog comments powered by Disqus