How to decide which housemates get which rooms?

[Pneumagger]

The thread is TL;DR because I'm super lazy.

There are two fair solutions to your situation and one easy:

1) Gather info on the suare footage of each bedroom. Discount the area in the walk through bedroom used to get to the 3rd bedroom (maybe something like a 10ft x 2ft "path"). Then the habitant of each room pays for thier respective percentage of the collective bedroom square footage.

2) You arrived last... quit ch'ur whinin'.

3) Live in the walkthrough room. NEVER pick ANYTHING up. Make it a big trashcan. The ulgier and stinkier - the better. Sooner or later, the guy in the other 3rd floor bedroom will want to trade rooms because he's tired of wading through your **** 6 times a day.
(This is not a good relationship building method)

Have you cosidered collecting everyone's rent for payment... and just pocketing all of it? Just be sure you have somewhere to live in 3 months when you get kicked out. Probably best not to tell your old roomates where your living nowadays. You could stand to get alot of money and a new room in 3 months!

[CaptaiN_JacK]

that would cover the cost of a single apartment for half a year, but I think I value my friendships more. And who hasn't heard some kind of story along the lines of, "I gave my portion of the utility/water/energy bills to my roommate every month but then found out he was using it for alcohol/drugs when the utilities/water/energy got shut off". My friend got a bad credit rating off a story like that.

gimp--I've been thinking the same thing about having one of the two guys that stayed home have to live on the 3rd floor. I mean, they recognized that it was a crappy room and that nobody would want to live there but yet they chose the house and expected other people to live in it? They basically chose the house (and rooms) for themselves without any consideration for the conditions the other housemates would have to live in.

Meeting is tomorrow night, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[spwz99]

dude, you we're the last to move in, suck it up, your boned.

That's the way I've always seen it done. Just like the shotgun rule. If you are slow for any reason you lose. It sucks, but that's why my roommate has the bigger bedroom with the decent closet. I was too slow and he beat me to the "dibs."

[Trigger_Happy]

The whole world runs on supply and demand, man. Just keep upping the premium on the desirable rooms and lowering the rent on the less desirable rooms until everybody is happy to be in the room they're in for the price they are paying. You might even find yourself willing to live in the crappy room if the discount grows large enough! At least your flatmates are cool enough to actually hold a little meeting and not just leave you SOL.

[CaptaiN_JacK]

You might even find yourself willing to live in the crappy room if the discount grows large enough!

I was thinking about that this morning! It could save me $500-$1000 this year if I get the discount I consider to be fair! It's not like I spend a lot of time in my room; my rooms have always just been a place for me to sleep, not a place to hang out. I just need to find a girl who has a nice room at her place

At least your flatmates are cool enough to actually hold a little meeting and not just leave you SOL.

Or maybe they realized that I'm the only one who hasn't signed a lease! I have a meeting tomorrow morning with the landlord to sign the papers. Or not, depending on how the meeting with the housemates goes tonight. I really truly hope it doesn't come to that though.

[MoeMag]

Are they trying to get you to not sign the papers? (do they not want you)

Just a thought...

[CaptaiN_JacK]

Update:

The meeting went well. We had a 3rd party mediator (our friend who lives in the single apt in the basement) so that helped keep negotiations peaceful. We figured out really quickly that nobody wanted the walk-through room on the 3rd floor (no surprise) so we immediately started adjusting rents to try and get them to levels where money would become an incentive to switch rooms. Then we found out that everybody was willing to spend a LOT of money to have the 2nd floor rooms.

I finally cracked when the walk through room rent was negotiated at $100 less than what it started at. That makes it's rent $170 less than the 2nd floor rooms. The other room on the 3rd floor is $150 less than the 2nd floor rooms.

I'm saving $1000 compared to my original rent so I'm happy. They get to keep their rooms so they're happy. I didn't think I would walk out of negotiations with the same room but it just makes sense to save a lot of money by sacrificing a little privacy. My roommate on the 3rd floor is really quiet anyways.

Thanks for the help guys.

[Papa_Smurf]

Glad it all got settled peacefully!

Also, good for you, in keeping the same room. That is the utter meaning of frugality, saving coin is great.

[Hilltop Customs]

yea, I would say $100 a month was worth a little room meeting! Now just make sure the person who gets utilities duty actually pays....it sucks when the electric and gas gets shut off, I know, had it happen at least 6 times from my old roommate.