<p>If there are four people living in a three bedroom apartment (meaning, two people share one room and the other two get their own rooms), how much more should the two individuals be paying each month for rent? Never mind the utilities.</p>
<p>Say, the rent is $2400/month.</p>
<p>Assuming the rooms are of equal size, I would do: </p>
<p>2400/3= 800;
800/2=400;</p>
<p>Person A & B pay 800 a month
Person C & D (sharing) pay 400 a month
Split utilities equally.</p>
<p>At my place, one room is a bit larger than the other two, so one person pays 100 more a month. The key is to make it clear at the start so disagreements don’t arise later on.</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s right, because you’re not just paying for the bedrooms, but the common space as well. If the apartment had three bedrooms and nothing else, then yeah, splitting rent by the number of rooms makes sense. Also, 100% more is way too much IMO. Then there wouldn’t be much point in moving into an apartment and splitting up the rent - you might as well live in a studio.</p>
<p>I was thinking more along the lines of:
2400/4 = 600
The two individuals pay ~100 more each month.
So A and B pay 650 each, C and D pay 550 each. I think $100 difference is the point where you’d be indifferent between sharing a room or living in your own room (i.e. the tradeoff is most fair).</p>
<p>It also depends on the size of the rooms too I think, because most 3 br apartments in Berkeley don’t have equal size rooms.</p>
<p>Agreed. divide the total cost by 3 (3 bedrooms) and that comes out to be 800. Then divide that by the # of people in each room and that’s how much each person in the room has to pay.</p>
<p>You pay for rooms, not the common room/kitchen/bathrooms, et cetera. Utilities generally cover that. I might increase the rent for those splitting the room by 100 (taking 900 dollars from 2400), but anything more seems excessive.</p>
<p>You could also agree that everyone will share a room for half the year, have their own room for half a year and split the rent equally.</p>
<p>i would do something like:
675
675
525
525</p>
<p>Interesting to see how this plays out in theory, because my roommates and I faced this exact problem when the four of us moved into a $2480/month, 3br 2 ba house in May '08. We went through all of the various scenarios you guys have suggested (shared common room space, dividing the third bedroom in two, price/sq. ft, etc.) and after much debate, we ended up splitting the $2480 rent into $700/$700/$540/$540.</p>
<p>In our house the two of us who share the one (slightly larger) room also share the foyer across the hallway (we put our desks in there so different sleeping habits aren’t an issue) so essentially we have 1.5 room(s) and about as much space per person as the two guys who have their own rooms. We were going to do a rotation where the guys who share the room switch with the guys who have their own rooms, but after the first year my roomie and I decided that it would be too much of a hassle so we decided to keep the same living arrangement. Now we’re in the middle of our sixth semester living together with no problems greater than whose turn it is to take out the trash on Thursday night.</p>