Roommate:
noun
friend or person sharing financial liability for a location of occupancy
but roommates are inevitable for most college freshman, at least until they graduate college.
Weird situations happen.
source
...and we can all get better at dealing with them. Let's discuss some possible points of contention so we can prevent awkward roommate situation
Rather than discuss problems, lets discuss solutions
In my first post of the series:
1. Rent:
IF there are three rooms of the same size, then its easy.
Otherwise, you have to discuss this. And its not easy.
Fortuantely, there are several tools available that can help you solve any other situation.
Roomie Calc
This one is cool because it allows you to determine fair rent purely on square footage, and also can include the number of people-per-room.
Perfect for the detail-oriented, you need square footage.
Here is an example of the input and output using this website:
SplitWise
This calculator is nice because it simplifies the process of calculating rent down to 3 steps. Perfect for those in a hurry.
Here is the quick processes:
Monthly rent and # of bedrooms
Describe the room qualities:
Then describe the common area:
Whist I like the idea of a calculator the example you showed is very odd. So a couple sharing a room only slightly bigger pay almost double the rent of a single person. What is the point of them sharing the room? they might as well have separate rooms.
Also I'm not sure what renting situations are like all around the world but it also depends on the responsibility of the flatmates. For example if someone decides to up and leave with no goodbye who has to pay for the rent? If the house gets damaged with no one to blame who has to pay? the list of these questions goes on.
There is never a good solution to this problem and that is why it is usually a case by case basis. I personally like the idea of one person choosing what a room is worth and then if you want to live there then you pay that amount.
Yea, interestingly the two calculators give different answers for the same situation:
In both cases, the calculator puts great weight on the amount of shared space, where all four of the roommates pay equally. If I repeat the example posted here while specifying 'huge' shared space, then the cost-per person becomes even closer:
And to your point about one person being in charge and deciding, this is ideal, but often requires some level of financial stability for the primary renter, which might not be the case for new kids starting college.