Renting Share houses

Yes, over 20 times now!
Be careful though, I have seen rents imporove by $300 per week profit and I have seen them decline due to increased vacancies. Remember that renting by the room is a "tool" to be used in the right circumstances and just like you can't use a hammer for every job, it cannot improve rental yields on every property. The property needs to be in:
A lower rent area (if you can get high rent by traditional means, why bother?)
Close to universities and facilities.
Have more than 3 bedrooms (if you are going to go throught the expense of furnishing and providing utilities why not go for the max number of tenancies allowed by council regulations?)
Be in great condition (run down houses do not rent well by the room!)
Also, you need to have a good exit strategy if it dosent work out!

By exit strategies I mean what would you do if the student accomodation scenario does not work. You need to be able to afford to hold the property on a normal rental yield so you need to know what it's market rent would be.
Or you need to work out your profit target if you need to sell.

Exit strategies are different for everyone.

@wintertail: enlightening post – i'd wondered about doing something like this myself.  Seems like peril at every turn.  I rent at the moment and am thinking about looking for a 3 bed place (to buy) and renting out the remaining 2 rooms to offset repayments.  I haven't found a suitable place, but my eye's open.

I managed to squeeze five rooms into my place and that extra $120 a week makes it worth it for me.  I wouldn't think it was worth the effort for just 4 people.

Cheers

There is a house in my town  that has four bedrooms,three bathrooms,a sun room, Then out the back is a self contained granny flat with another big room with water connected above it. All have there own entrance. Asking $400,000 but has a lot of potential.Centrally located too.

renting rooms sounds good but to stress the point again, it would need to be near a large work/or study facility eg. uni a public hospital etc. Then again i was thinking of Armidale NSW , using the Uni of New England students – but then again its hard dealing we four-five highly stressed out uni students- there are it's pros and cons for sure.

Hi there – we have a place that we rent out by the room. Is working OK, but you do need to have the time (and energy) to do more work (ie: maintenance, gardening, sorting out household "issues" etc). We manage it ourselves, so priority if doing this is not only to have it somewhere where people want to rent by the room, but also somewhere close to your home.

Anyway – we've struck a snag. We want to buy another place and do the same thing BUT our lender has told us they won't lend for a serviced apartment or serviced house – classified as "ineligible security". This is despite us having a 2 year track record of making this work. All our loans (PPOR + 3IPs) are with this lender. I was told that – had they known we were going to turn one of our places into a serviced house – they would not have approved the loan. They base their sums on what the house would achieve as a standard rental.

Has anyone else encountered a lender with this policy of not lending for serviced accommodation (or have we just got a very conservative lender)?

We plan to refinance, but want to know if we're likely to strike the same problem with lots of other lenders.

thanks for any help on this.

Carlin

I have been renting out spare rooms in the house I live in for the last 2 years.  Given largely due to the arease but I have had hassle after hasle after hassle.  One fellow was only here for 3 weeks and because I was working full time at that stage I wasn't home much.  when I finally got a day off I was woken by 5 police officers with a search warrant as this darling cherrub was dealing drugs from my house while I was at work.  Luckily I wasn't dragged into it all but as a result it's on my house's record and I'm now known as a drug house by local police.  i've also had a paint sniffing couple who lasted 4 days and various other weirdos who appear normal until the week after they move in. 

aside from that I have had possibly the grubbiest people in the world here.  None of them respect your property as most of them will never have property of their own.  Overall I don't think the profits made were nearly enough to cover the damage to my possesions or house reputation. 

It's because of this I would be VERY warey of who you get in.  make sure you trust your property managers instinct and make sure they check their references.

I will also add that I'm reletivley new to all of this and I'm sure most of the mistakes could have been avoided by a more experienced person.

Goood Luck

Hayley

The worst people i've gotten were from advertising on realestate.com, after the druggo and the paint sniffers i no longer do that hehe.  alternatively i advertise in the local paper, i generally get a lot of calls but more often then not people dont bother showing up when they say they will etc. I put my details down for an agent my dad used to get his share people but I never heard anything.

as for the spook thing I've had many weirdos, mainly males.  I've learnt like you to go with my gut also.  unfortuntly I'm too nice and deffinatly too nieve.  I'm only 23 an know noone in my situation so it was all trial and error really.  I have a couple in one of my rooms atm and they are awesome.  we get aong really well and they're extreemly helpfull.  they're even going to [aint the outside of my house in exchange for a couple weeks free rent.

like i said, trial and error
I'm learning slowly.
Just makes it a lot harder when im the only person i know aside from my father who has property and our views are becomming very different the more i research about it all.  hence why I'm here, to learn more

but yes sounds like you have the better idea about it all.

god luck with it

hayley