Cost for Room & Board for a relative?

[brownthumb]

My brother has an apartment lease expiring and we are trying to figure out what a fair price would be to charge him for room and board to live with my wife and I. We are all middle-aged. He lived with us previously and we all got along very well but it was only for a few months. This could be a longer period of time..maybe even a permanent situation.
What is a fair price?
It will probably be linked to a CPI index for the future.

[AngieM2]

Check the newspaper where you live, or craigslist.org for nearest city of same size and see what they are charging. Should give you a reasonable basis to work from.

Angie

[wy_white_wolf]

How much is the present apartment and food costing him. I would start figuring from there and work down.

[Dreams30]

If it is just you, your wife and then, him....

I would divide what it costs you by 3 and that is his actual cost of living there.

Add in everything you pay:

rent
mortgage
utilities
taxes
budget an amount for wear and tear, etc

One third of that amount should be his cost

[WindowOrMirror]

Trust me when I tell you one small piece of advice - learned from long painful experience; there isn't a sum of money that will be enough. You may not feel that way in the first month, or even in the sixth, but you WILL feel that way somewhere along the line.

R

[uncle Will in In.]

It is worth a lot more than you might think. If your wife cooks and cleans, plus does the laundry, ii would seem fair if he paid for 100 percent of the grocery bill. He should pay half of what your home would rent for. Since you pay the insurance, taxes, and upkeep, one half is very reasonable. The utilities should cost him a third of the total. What about the phone bill? Any less than this would be taking advantage of you, and especially your wife who will have double duty.

[Wolf mom]

I agree with all of the above along with some suggestions:
Phone: he should have his own cell.
Food: he buy's his own - unless you cook for him, then he pays more.
He does his own laundry.
Living in a clean house? In exchange for yard work...
He takes care of his own room + bedding.
and Please, put what is agreed upon in writing.

What is the benefit to you having him live with you?
A few months is a honeymoon period. Forever is a long time!
Not working out needs to be talked about up front - for both sides.

[WisJim]

Be sure to discuss up front what you will do if you start to get unhappy with him living with you. Based on past experiences, I would say $10,000 a month wouldn't be too high.<G>

[beorning]

It would depend on how you feel about him living there. I lived with my sister and brother in law for a year. We got along fine, but I eventually became dissatisfied with the fact that I was covering one third of the bills for what amounted to use of a bedroom and bathroom. It was very much their house and their rules. This was fine, but I didn't think I should be contributing equally to the operation of the household when I had so little to do with how it functioned. I.E. - I paid one third of the power bill, but had no license to even discuss the fact that my sister was fond of leaving the house for the day with all of the lights on and the tv, the A/C and the computer running. I paid for 1/3 of the groceries, but had no input on what was purchased and did most of the cooking and dishwashing. I had to purchase my own lunch supplies seperately, and ate out frequently, rather than suffer yet another evening of chicken helper or pigs in a blanket.

It was their house, and I left on good terms, but I wouldn't live there again. Fair, in my mind would have been the going rate for a room with bathroom and kitchen priveleges. With me buying my own food. I paid double that, easily.

Being open and candid about expectations would be the best route to determine what a fair rate for room and board would be.

[Mrs. Vet]

Set up your rules right from the first. If he is used to doing his own laundry, have him continue to do so. That way it is not that much extra work for your wife. Have him keep his own area clean. No loud music after bed time. What ever your bed time is.

Start off as you plan to live. Making the rules as you go along is not workable.

Be fair in your dividing up the work around the house and the cost of living there. Ask him what he enjoys having to eat. To share your home is to share your lives. So be fair to all parties.

[Madame]

Originally Posted by brownthumb

My brother has an apartment lease expiring and we are trying to figure out what a fair price would be to charge him for room and board to live with my wife and I. We are all middle-aged. He lived with us previously and we all got along very well but it was only for a few months. This could be a longer period of time..maybe even a permanent situation.
What is a fair price?
It will probably be linked to a CPI index for the future.

1/3 of the house payment, 1/3 of the grocery bill, 1/3 of the utilities

[Ole Man Legrand]

No Roof is large enough to cover two families. Jay

[Old John]

Originally Posted by Ole Man Legrand

No Roof is large enough to cover two families. Jay

Aye, and a House, like a Ship, can only have one Master..........

[Lionrose]

Originally Posted by brownthumb

My brother has an apartment lease expiring and we are trying to figure out what a fair price would be to charge him for room and board to live with my wife and I. We are all middle-aged. He lived with us previously and we all got along very well but it was only for a few months. This could be a longer period of time..maybe even a permanent situation.
What is a fair price?
It will probably be linked to a CPI index for the future.

This is just me and my opinion.
But I would find it hard to charge a family member or close friend anything above what it actually cost to live there. No matter what the going price or what it would cost them to live else where. Family and dear friends are to be helped not hindered when they are in need. Just the way I am.

Now someone who isn’t family or close friend would be charged close to the going rate.

As some have stated I do believe 1/3 of all living expenses such as rent/mortgage utility’s, cable TV ect…would be fair. They are grow and can be responsible for the cleaning of there own space, doing of there own laundry ect… another phone line so they have there own with there own bill. Groceries would be up to them they could pay 1/3 of my grocery bill or purchase and prepare there own meals wouldn’t matter to me.

We are softy’s and have helped family and friends when they were in need. Some we didn’t charge anything was just helping them get back on there feet, but they didn’t stay long and did “save” to get back up.

There are those you can’t help even if you wanted to.

Rose

[frazzlehead]

I think it depends on what your arrangements will be.

If he's going to live as part of the family (meals together, food all in one cupboard, doing his own wash but in the same machine with the same detergent) then I'd say something like this:

Figure out monthly expenses to operate the whole house (mortgage, taxes, utilities, no food bill). Figure out square footage of your house. How much of it will be "his"? If he lives in say, 25% of the house that is all his, then he pays 25% of the total bills for the house. I figure if I had the basement all to myself, say, with a private bathroom, small den and a bedroom I'd pay more in rent than if I had the spare bedroom and shared a bath with the rest of the family. So, I'd prorate the amount accordingly.

Then take your current grocery bill and add on enough to cover one more person - add that to your prior total. If he doesn't eat with you, then leave this part out. Although I think that not eating all together (at least normally) might make for tension - you cook a nice meal for yourselves, and he eats mac & cheese ... after you eat? at the same time? do you have to cook in the kitchen together? Oi, I'd just as soon cook for 3 as have to time my kitchen usage, but that's just me

As everyone has said, talk about what the days will look like and who's responsible for what. The tradeoff of 'I'll clean the bathrooms if you shovel the sidewalks" or something is probably a good idea too (well, if you live where there's snow... )

[the mama]

Some people can make it work, but often someone feels taken advantage of. Be a family, treat this like a grown child moving back in. Any money given towards the household expenses is only a token and does not imply any rights. There needs to be a head of household to make rules/ decisions/ and to appeal to if there are problems.Communication is a big thing, be able to say, this gets on my nerves BEFORE you're at the want to do violence stage. Any special foods, like bag lunches should be purchased by the boarder. Chores and helping in the yard should be accepted as mandatory. Remember this is your house, you pay taxes and upkeep. Yes, you want this person to be grateful, you are sharing your house and life with them. But you do not need their money to survive. You are doing him a favor and just think, you will care for him as family when he is sick or depressed. Money can not compensate for that.

[suburbanite]

My family has housed each other temporarily at no charge for various reasons. For us it winds up working out fairly in the end, and we try to work our way out of the situation promptly.

You might want to check 'rooms for rent' and 'homes to share' listings in your area to see what is considered 'fair' in your area. Depending on the situation you might also look at things like lawn service and such, to get an idea of the financial value of chores that he might do in lieu of rent around the house.

If you are housing him because he's insolvent, then chores for rent credit is probably a good thing to try. If you are housing him because you're insolvent and need to rent out a room to fix your cash flow, and he happens to be available and better than a stranger, then giving him low-market rates and no chores is the better way to go.

If you're doing it because you all enjoy each other's company so much that you're constantly at each other's homes anyway, then sitting down as a group to figure the split is the way to do it.

I guess I'm saying you have to figure out what the point of this arrangement is, and use that to guide how you structure it.