Student Rental - How to divide bills? Advice please

skintstudent1234

Hi

My housemates and I have just got our first bill, which comes to about £270 for Sep 13 - Mar 14. One of my housemates has a partner (who is not a tenant) who spends a lot of time at our house - often staying for weeks at a time - and has previously said they are happy to pay up extra because of this.

How much should we charge this housemate?

There are four of us on the tenancy.

Any advice will be much appreciated

Lokolo

It depends how long they've stayed. If they stay approximately 4 days a week then total person days a week is 17.

So you pay 7/17ths (£111) and they pay 10/17ths (£159).

edit - I didn't realise how many of you there are, but I'm sure you can work it out with a bit of simple math!

RAS

So there are about 100 person weeks between you, which would be £2.70 per week.

If this other person stays say 13 weeks it is £2.39 per week.

That is assuming it is something that the other person's presence makes a difference to like power. If it is the TV licence, then I would pass on that and just split in 4.

Soleil_lune

skintstudent1234 wrote: »

Hi

My housemates and I have just got our first bill, which comes to about £270 for Sep 13 - Mar 14. One of my housemates has a partner (who is not a tenant) who spends a lot of time at our house - often staying for weeks at a time - and has previously said they are happy to pay up extra because of this.

How much should we charge this housemate?

There are four of us on the tenancy.

Any advice will be much appreciated

How about the four of you pay £60 each - £240 in total... and he pays £30.

OR you pay £55 each and he pays £50. Depends if you want him to pay virtually as much as everyone else, or not.

I would suggest the first option. £60 each from you four on the tenancy, and thirty off him: sounds good to me.

G_M

agree with the above approaches.

and is this going to be an ongoing arrangement? What about other bills?

and how do yuo divide shopping for communal items?

skintstudent1234

Said housemate with the partner (call them A) is now saying that they never said that and trying to make other housemates pay because they also have partners (but who only stay for weekends rather than 5 days at a time minimum).

We are tempted to just pay equal share to just make this go away as A is charge of the water bill (although all of our names are on it). A is refusing to pay the company until we pay A first.

The rest of the house does not get on particularly well (slight understatement) with A or A's partner but are civil to them.

Should we just pay A to get A off our back? We are stuck with A until the end of our tenancy in June.

skintstudent1234

All of the suggestions are great but A is very reluctant to pay anything now, despite what A said previously so we think the chances of getting any money off A for A's partner are pretty slim. We are also concerned about further breaching the tenancy (A's partner already breaches our "short occasional visit" clause) as accepting money off A from A's partner could be deemed as subletting / having a tenant

Soleil_lune

Whoever is your Landlord then, I would report this person being there. Stuff your mate whose partner it is: they obviously have no thought for their housemates. This partner of your housemate has no right to be there. Tell the landlord and make sure you all cover your own backs!

cr1mson

When we did this we split the bills 4 ways but for every night we had a guest over we put a £1 in a pot. This money was then used first to pay any bills.

So if we got a bill for £50 and there was £10 in the pot we would each pay £10 each.

C

chuckley

report them to the landlord, however im amazed you've all put up with this in the first place.