Sunday, July 22, 2007

Losing a Roommate

Well, yesterday we received a call from one of our roommates that was visiting family for the week that she will be moving out on Monday. It was nothing wrong with our place or anything (right before she left she had paid 2 months worth of rent to be 1 month ahead), but the situation her grandkids were in was appalling to say the least. The parents were both working and didn't have enough money to send their 3 kids to a babysitter, so they put the 7 year old in charge of the 1 & 2 year old. I feel so blessed that my wife can stay at home with our daughter and not have to work. The roommate is going to move to a place close to them, found a different job, and is going to be watching the kids like a hawk to make sure they are taken care of.

We've posted on Craigslist a room for rent for $350/month, hopefully we will get some taker soon. The plan I have for the roommate leaving is that we are going to pay her back the $350 she pre-paid for August, but the remaining portion of July we will hold onto until we find a replacement for the room. If we find someone quick, she will get back an amount equal to the remainder of her month lease. If we don't find anyone within the next 2 weeks (her rent was due on the 7th of the month), she at least gets her $350 back. We figure this is a very fair arrangement since our agreement is month-to-month and we were given 48 hour notice of moving out.

2 comments:

Denise Mall said...

I never realized before how much work goes into renting rooms. I always thought it was just the aggravation of a stranger in your home. Reading your posts, makes me see how much this is like a part-time job.

I hope you find someone fast.

Sick of Debt said...

It's a great income when things are moving smoothly, but yeah it is a part-time job. With 4 rooms being rented and us going month-to-month, it ends up we have renters here on average for about 6 months. One fun thing is the scam-artists that ignore my posting about locals only and try to see about sending me a huge fake money order and then try to ask for me to send them some cash back.

The other hard part I don't mention much is the little things, like making sure everyone knows their parking spot, dealing with issues faster than I normally would (eg: bugs), safety (eg: Carbon Monoxide detectors required in our state as of this year within 20 feet of sleeping spaces.), etc.