[Closed] Letting rooms in your home, anybody do it?

Are you going to be living there or just renting out the house by the room ?
We had lodgers for a few years and it was fine as long as you set the ground rules out at interview/vetting stage , we had rental property years later and used an agent but I did all the maintenance .

Yes I do it at the moment.

I used spareroom.co.uk, but I also put adverts in the local shop and on gumtree. Spareroom also gives advice on the legal side / tax etc.

Through spareroom I got a lot of enquiries, but all were looking for short term lets on short notice (guys doing contract work), I was looking for someone more long term, who would use and treat the house as their own.

I had a couple of enquiries through gumtree which were more suitable, and I have ended up with a 30 year old Canadian law student staying with me. He moved in last August and is looking to stay until at least next Christmas, so 16 months in total. In my case it works really well. We are both quite tidy, slightly OCD. We both have common ground with doing outdoors stuff. He is a student so doesn't get up until I'm away for work, and is generally out until I'm heading for bed.

It is important to figure out how the house is going to work for you. Are you just letting the room? What communal areas will you share? I wanted someone to treat the place as a home, so we share all areas, but I'm lucky enough to have a separate wee snug, as well as the main sitting room. We do have a rule that if either of us want so time to chill out alone / study / just to be grumpy then that person uses the snug, and the other respects their wish to be left in peace.

It can work, you (I) end up doing most of the cleaning etc, but it is worth it for the extra income which I need just now.

EDIT - I had assumed you meant while you were still living there. If you mean letting out the house as a whole then please ignore me 🙂

If it's rooms as above, another + for spareroom, plus you could think about doing a Mon-Fri let only, as (*sorry this is based on you working normalish mon-fri hours) as that means when you're in most the house is yours and there is a definite market for 'weekly commute' workers

*check you insurance - you will probably not be covered for theft and I suspect you need to tell them

*check implications on council tax of another fulltime resident and price accordingly

Yes, when we first moved into this house we had 3 rooms let to lodgers for about 5 years. It paid the mortgage, allowed us to renovate much faster than otherwise, and worked well most of the time.
We just had one really awkward lodger, got on OK with the others, but no real disasters.
We were fortunate in that it's a large house which we could set up with a 2nd kitchen, as most disagreements from house sharing seem to be centred around cooking and cleanliness in that area.

I work contract and let a room in someone else's house Mon-Fri which is usually only Mon-Thurs... If I could get a lodger in like me id be made up. Get in late most evenings, out the door before 6am. I don't cook, I do use the kitchen to make butties but tend to eat out most nights, I shower at the gym and I take all my laundry home. £150 a week, easy money!

£150 a week...somewhere metropolitan?

I've done it for 5 years op, used Gumtree.

Thanks for all your answers/experiences, some good points there. Spare rooms website was suggested to me this afternoon, will look at that later.
We would be living/sharing house with lodger, we have a large house and the room has a en-suite also plenty of room for sofa and desk etc.
My wife is currently unemployed and it is proving to be difficult to find another job in her field at 55, so we need to get some money coming in before we have to make that decision to sell up and down size.
Matt.