How to Turn Housemates Into House Hacking!

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What You Need to Know When Moving In with Housemates and House Hacking

[00:00:34] The Importance of the Lease
[00:05:08] Utilities, Bills, and Other Finances
[00:08:46] Write a List of All Expenses in Advance
[00:09:15] Household Responsibilities
[00:10:41] Decorating & Furnishing
[00:12:12] Lifestyle & Social
[00:12:36] Visitors
[00:14:55] Communication
[00:15:31] My First House-Hack
[00:16:02] Recap and Steps to Take
[00:17:10] Shameless Plug

The Importance of the Lease
How long is the lease?
Whose names will be on the lease?
What is the deposit?
What happens if somebody moves out?
And what are the consequences if those responsibilities are not met?
What happens if one housemate isn't able to pay their rent or their utilities in any given month? Who's going to be responsible for covering their portion?
Who will be responsible for enforcing the landlord's policies with guests or visitors?

Utilities, Bills, and Other Finances
Which utilities included with the rent?
Whose name are the utilities going to be in?
What happens if one housemate doesn't utilize certain services? (i.e. Video streaming, cable, etc.) Are they going to be responsible for contributing their share to those services?
Common household items, such as toilet, paper soap, cleaning products
Wear and tear and breakage on the property.
Lawn care, plants, shoveling sidewalks, and other common responsibilities

Write a List of All Expenses in Advance
Write out a list of how much it's going to cost each person to live there.
Make sure that everybody knows the true cost of living in the house or the apartment prior to moving in.

- Rent
- Renters insurance
- Utilities
- Common items
- Services
- Other miscellaneous items

Household Responsibilities
What will be the rule on leaving dirty dishes in the sink?
What will be the rule on running the dishwasher at night, or emptying the dishwasher in the morning?
Who will be responsible for buying communal items, such as toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning supplies?
What is going to be a communal item and what is not?
Are you going to keep those all separate, or are some of those things going to be shared?
How are you going to manage buying and distributing those? Especially if some people use them more than others.
Is anybody going to have pets? Who will pick up after a dog when it goes outside? Or who will clean the litter box for a cat? And how often?

Decorating & Furnishing
What is going to be common furniture?
What is going to be exclusive to the owner of that furniture?
What happens if there's damage or wear and tear?

Lifestyle & Social
What kind of lifestyle and social life do each of you live?
Who's a night owl? Who's an early bird?
Who needs quiet time on the premises to study during the day?
Do people like to play music loudly?
What time at night will that music not be permitted?
Who takes long showers? How big is the hot water heater? Do you have unlimited hot water, or does everybody need to compete for one hot water tank every morning?
What's going to be your policy on substances in the house?
What will be the consequences of breaking the rules and how will that be handled?

Visitors
What is the policy going to be on having overnight visitors?
Will visitors be allowed overnight? And if so, how many nights? Or which particular nights?
Who uses an alarm clock? Who hits the snooze button for an hour And how is that going to affect the other housemates?
Will you host parties? Or what if one or two of the housemates are hosting a party? Who's going to be responsible for monitoring the guests, who's going to be responsible for cleaning up, and who's going to be responsible for damage that could get caused during those parties?
Do you share a bathroom?

Communication
When things do come up, and they inevitably will, how are you going to communicate about it?
Perhaps you have an agreed upon house meeting once or twice a month
Establish a protocol for communicating with each other in a healthy and constructive way.

My First House-Hack
[Story time…]

Recap and Steps to Take
First, write down or download a list of all the topics that you want to discuss prior to moving in together.
Sit down with your future housemates, before moving in together, and have this conversation. Be honest with yourself and with others.
Have everybody come to agreement, put agreements in writing, and everybody signs them.
Put the House Rules up in the house, so people don't forget.


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