I was thinking about this a lot in the past few days, what's the best way to split the rent evenly and fairly that won’t lead to the destruction of friendships. In particular this became a point of importance as I plan on spending my summer in San Francisco with some friends. Fourteen to be exact. Now the easiest thing would be just split the rent 14 ways were we all to live together, but clearly this isn’t going to be fair or even. Also there is NO CHANCE I’m sharing one place with fourteen people.
So what is the fairest way to split the rooms and split the rent. Well I came across this blog.
http://splittherent.blogspot.com/
This whole thing was created by Jonathan Bittner (No, I’ve never seen is spelt that way either), and astrophysics graduate student from Harvard.
The basics of how it works are this. Split the rent gives you the “market” value of how the rent should/could be fairly split between all parties involved.
What is handles best? Well according to the site, unequally sized rooms, couples sharing, up to 8 bedrooms and the extras of the rooms such as windows, closets, toilets, etc... (It takes note of every factorial it can think of)
Now this calculator clearly isn’t for everyone, if you find yourself in the worst of rooms, but are willing to pay more rent, something needs to be negotiated there. It all comes down to, negotiation over rooms with your friends once you use the calculator. But give it a go now, see if it satisfies your needs.
Go to Jon’s site here: Split the Rent Calculator
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