Rented three rooms in my own house, collected two thirds of plan

The November part is the one I'd underline. Room rentals in a college town have a leasing season and if you miss it you eat the whole gap, because nobody is going to sign a nine month lease starting in the middle. Did you find out when your local season actually turns, or are you guessing at July like I would be?

The utilities number is the one that always surprises people. $340 average and $430 in summer on a four bedroom sounds about right for a house with four adults who did not pay the bill. When rent includes utilities the tenants have no reason to close a window. I put a flat utility allowance in the lease at my places and anything above it gets billed back, and consumption dropped maybe 15 percent the first summer just from people knowing there was a number.

Anchor asked the right thing. I'd also want to know whether your $750 was a real quote from anyone or a number off listings. Listings are asks, not signed rents.

Out where I look, rooms go for $450 to $550 and the payment is smaller too, so the arithmetic is the same shape at a lower price point. The friend thing costs the same everywhere though. I did it once with a cousin and the lesson was worth about $2,000.

Every unit teaches something, and yours taught the same thing my first duplex did: the lease you didn't write is the money you don't collect. I'd push back slightly on verity though. A duplex is one lease and one turn, but it's also one income stream. When my one tenant left I was at zero, and sable at least had two rooms still paying while the third sat. Room rentals spread the vacancy risk out into smaller pieces. They just make more of them.

The $4,200 in furniture is a line item I see people leave out constantly. Furnished rooms usually rent faster and a little higher, so it isn't wasted, but it belongs in your basis and in the number you compare against renting an apartment. Otherwise year one looks like a failure when part of it was a one time spend.

Second year already better is the whole point. Nobody's first year of anything hits the pro forma. You still own a house with three income streams and you learned what your utilities cost, which took twelve months and about eight thousand dollars, and now you know it forever.

What did screening look like for the two rooms that worked? I'm about to place my first tenant and the part I can't get comfortable with is how much you can actually verify on someone renting a bedroom, where income is often part time or from a parent.

Sub-meter is the part I'm stuck on. Do you mean an actual second electric meter on the house, or a smaller device just to see who used what? Those sound like very different amounts of money.

Let me restate the numbers because I think the loss is smaller than the post makes it sound. Payment $2,650. Collected $18,480 for the year. So you paid $13,320 out of pocket for housing, call it $1,110 a month, in a house you own. Furniture was $4,200 of one time spend, so the recurring version of your year one was closer to $760 a month. What were you paying in rent before? If it was $1,300 you are ahead on cash even in your worst year, and that's before the loan paydown. The real hole is the $1,500 uncollected and the four empty months, which is $4,500 of room rent gone. Fix the calendar and the lease and your year two number will tell you whether the house works. Nothing here says it doesn't.