Would You Rent a Bedroom in my House?

I met a prospective property management client recently that had just gone through a horrible eviction of their previous tenant.  The house was now vacant, and he had fired his past property manager.  He called me to see if I could help him.

His past tenant was using the house to manufacture drugs.  All the sinks and pipes had to be replaced in the aftermath of the eviction.

This owner came up with an idea to rent out each individual bedroom instead of renting out the entire house.  He wanted to reserve one bedroom for himself so he could come and go and keep an eye on things.

My feeling on the matter was that this owners real problem was he had no confidence in the either his ability to screen tenants or a property managers ability to do the same.  He wanted to be in the property just to make sure all was well.  I pointed out to him that the type of people that might rent a room were just as risky, if not more risky, than if he rented the whole house out.

My company, HomePointe, does not rent out individual rooms since we have a good track record renting out whole houses.  It is 2-3 times more work to rent out the rooms individually and probably is best left to an owner operator to do for him or her self.  I do not want to get involved in referring fights amoung the roommates!

I told this owner, "good luck" and went on with my day.