Temporarily moving in with someone.

[stef]

Have any of you ever moved in with someone temporarily in order to save money towards purchasing your own place?
This would be for a set amount of time in which you pay rent and help with the groceries, but most of your income is saved.
Also, there would be an up-front agreememt that if you are unable to save enough for your down-payment, then you would have to move back to a rental, or whatever. This would ease the homeowners mind that the situation had a defined duration and give the renter the incentive to keep pushing towards that goal.

The only exception might be if the folks involved found they really LIKE living together. At that point they might discuss extending the arrangement.

Any thoughts or experiences on this?

stef

[Shrek]

closest I've come to that was my 5 year marriage and getting the house and what was left of the 20 year mortgage while she went away with $12,000 cash and the best of our SUVs.

Sort of a reversed engineered version of your scenario, but I liked how it turned out. Plus once our marriage was over and she and her maintenance expenses was gone, I was able to do away with the remaining 15 years of the mortgage in 6 years

[cowboy joe]

I let a friend stay with me for a bit while he was trying to get back on his feet. Best suggestion is to put the financial agreement (who pays what & when) in writing to minimize any issues. Also, if possible, do a trial run now before you commit as you may find that even living with a close friend may be challenging. I like your idea of a defined timed. Good luck.

[blooba]

Originally Posted by cowboy joe

I let a friend stay with me for a bit while he was trying to get back on his feet. Best suggestion is to put the financial agreement (who pays what & when) in writing to minimize any issues. Also, if possible, do a trial run now before you commit as you may find that even living with a close friend may be challenging. I like your idea of a defined timed. Good luck.

Yep, have everything written down and treat them as renters because if things go south legally they are residing there so you can't just kick them out. Have to do the whole eviction thing if things go south. Also make sure you get more than just a couch because living in the living room just dont really work the greatest. Also don't forget about cleaning/cooking and other chores You and they should split them fairly evenly since you both are residing there. Don't assume nothing try to cover everything up front. People are weird.

[wy_white_wolf]

I'd say to watch the episode of King of the Hill where Luann rents the house next door and has to take on roomates to get by.

Work out everything you can in advance in writing.

[Forerunner]

I've been on the "receiving" end of such an arrangement, several times in my youth.
In all but one of the cases, I had been invited.
The case where I just "showed up" made for some of my best life memories.

In every case, I became the dishwasher, the lawnmower, the handyman, the stall cleaner, etc. I did laundry. I bought groceries. In only one case was I ever compelled to offer a sum of money. But, those folks were missionaries and we all knew that it was going for a good cause......
In every case, the host(s) hated to see me go for the simple fact that I put aside "free time" during my stay, and made myself a servant.
I highly recommend that any who are forced or choose to subject themselves to such an arrangement do the same.

[ronbre]

when we were first marrie we had a gal live with us..and our son has had people stay with him..he has a big house and is alone otherwise..right now he has a guy living in his basement and a girl and her 2 yr old in 2 spare rooms

[palani]

People in the U.K. are familiar with this form of living arrangement. It is called a bed and breakfast. This is not the same concept of B&B derived in the U.S. where it is an upscale holiday for wealthy people. The original B&Bs were intended to make temporary housing affordable while permitting the homeowner to purchase a larger property than he otherwise could.

[haypoint]

While this isn't exactly "sharing a place", such situations seldom turn out well unless the parties involved are either in love, having sex or both. Hard for two adults to live together otherwise.
But it can be done.
I rented a room for quite awhile and that worked out well, but I stayed there just for sleep and quickly cooking and laundry. Not sure that "sharing costs for food" would work.

A friend took in a co-worker for the summer. Didn't charge her anything, so she could save money. She never helped with housework, her room was a mess and she took showers untill the hot water was gone. Since the homeowner has a dog, it wasn't a problem to have her dog there sometimes. She was keeping her dog with her mom and figured the beagle would be at the house rarely. The dog was there most of the time, shed on everything and when a "piddle spot" showed up on the carpet, she denied it was her dog's and a friendship was broken.

Get everything you can think of in writing.

From my experiences renting a house, people that have not owned a house, do not understand the ongoing costs of ownership and the importance of caring for your property. From the homeowner's viewpoint, that looks like carelessness.

I think Forerunner has the right idea.

[littlebitfarm]

Originally Posted by Forerunner

ose folks were missionaries and we all knew that it was going for a good cause......
In every case, the host(s) hated to see me go for the simple fact that I put aside "free time" during my stay, and made myself a servant.
I highly recommend that any who are forced or choose to subject themselves to such an arrangement do the same.

Let me know if you want a slight change of scenery. I have a spare bedroom and several stalls that need cleaned out!

Kathie

[Freeholder]

My daughter and I stayed in a friend's family room, in the basement, for several months after my marriage broke up. I paid a small amount for rent, plus did most of the housework and shoveled the snow out of the driveway. Food was kept separate except for Sunday dinner which we took turns making, and often invited other friends over for. The homeowner, a widow, was also renting bedrooms to my middle daughter and another friend (female) from church, so it was sort of like a boarding house, and sort of like family. It was difficult even so. You really do need to have everyone's responsibilities figured out ahead of time, and you also need to have adequate private space for everyone. The family room where my daughter and I were was also the only way to access the laundry room and the storage room at the back of the basement where we all had stuff stored. So we really didn't have any privacy, nor any place to go to get privacy. Everyone else at least had a bedroom door that they could shut. It's not a situation I would want to be in again.

Where we are now is a little better, but still not the best. My daughter and I each have our own bedrooms, but the house belongs to my grandmother and she makes most of the decisions. There are things that I would like to do, and would do if it was my home, to make the place more sustainable for the long run, but Grandma doesn't want to do them. It's going to come back to bite us in the long run, I'm afraid -- she lived through the first Depression, but doesn't realize that this one is going to be much worse before it's over, and that we will probably never go back to the wealthy country that we once were. All I can do is what I can do. Anyway, we split the bills -- there's no mortgage, thankfully. We split buying the groceries. Grandma has been cooking supper, but I think I'm going to have to start doing that, too (she's having some joint pain -- to be expected at almost 97, I guess). I do almost all the housework and all the outdoor work, and take Grandma to most of her Dr. appointments -- sometimes my mother is able to help with those.

Kathleen

[whodunit]

For the food arrangements, the roommate situations I've been in it worked best to have a cabinet/refrig shelf for each person to store their food and then have common pots, pans, and dishes.

I think we also did rotating chores, so one person wasn't stuck forever with something they detested doing.

There was also kind of an agreed to level of cleanliness, but if someone was more picky they could feel free to clean more thoroughly on their own.

The common areas had to be free of personal items such as clothing, etc. Each had his own room they could keep up or not keep up as much as they wanted within limits.

An agreement as to visitors or house guests might be in order as well. We were all single Christian men, so overnight females guests were a no-no.

[whodunit]

For the food arrangements, the roommate situations I've been in it worked best to have a cabinet/refrig shelf for each person to store their food and then have common pots, pans, and dishes.

I think we also did rotating chores, so one person wasn't stuck forever with something they detested doing.

There was also kind of an agreed to level of cleanliness, but if someone was more picky they could feel free to clean more thoroughly on their own.

The common areas had to be free of personal items such as clothing, etc. Each had his own room they could keep up or not keep up as much as they wanted within limits.

An agreement as to visitors or house guests might be in order as well. We were all single Christian men, so overnight females guests were a no-no.

[PhilJohnson]

I wouldn't do it unless it was either some I knew well enough to know that we were compatible or a complete stranger. If I have to kick out a stranger I won't end a friendship.

My friend tested the waters with a room-mate. A good friend of his wanted to move into his house. Prior to this, the same fella wanted to move in with me. I am really good friends with him but knew living in a room mate situation would never work because he is an absolute slob and not real keen on paying rent on time. I warned my other friend not to let him move in with him if he still wanted to have a friendship after everything was all said and done. They made the plunge (place was a smallish upper apartment) and it started out well enough at first. But then after a while the slobbyness started to creep in.

And then a girl entered the picture. The slobby friend decided since she was staying in his room that it was fair for her to split his half the the rent instead of splitting it three ways. I thought it was complete and utter nonsense. Unfortunately for my other friend she was also a slob and also was either completely oblivious or didn't care as to how this how situation was unfair to him. There were a lot of arguments over dirty dishes and TP. Finally my friend got sick of buying a bunch of TP all the time (the couple would only get the cheapest stuff they could find and only in a 4 roll pack) and resorted to putting printer paper liberated from his work in place of TP. The other two complained, which to that my friend told them that there were two butts for his one and they should be buying 2/3rds of the TP. Finally he resorted to keeping TP locked up in his closet.

Another rather irritating problem was that even though the slobby buddy was splitting rent with his girlfriend (and plus she got 100 bucks a month from her parents to help pay for rent) and despite the fact he made almost a third more than his buddy who paid half the rent this guy was continually late with his rent. The rent was really cheap (450 total for the whole place). Time after time the slobby friend would complain he didn't have any money for the rent and then buy 200 dollar headphones or some latest gadget do-dad.

And then there was the dog. After staying there for nearly a year the slobby friend's gf wanted a dog. My friend did not one but slobby buddy said he wanted to take care of his mom's very old dog that was on his last legs. My friend reluctantly agreed only because the dog was quite old. Well imagine his surprise when a very rambunctious golden lab puppy shows up a short time latter. The pup only added to the messiness. Tearing up blankets, making puppy messes everywhere and badly misbehaved this pup was something of a little terror. My friend refused to do anything to take care of the pup much to the chagrin of his room-mate's GF. Once when I went out to dinner with the slobby friend and his GF (the other guy was not along) they tried to solicit my sympathy for my friend's lack of interest in taking care of their dog. I bluntly told them if I was their room mate it would have been either the dog or a place to live (they didn't sign any lease as well).

Eventually they moved out but not without a lot of hard feelings and damaging a friendship that has since never been the same. After all this I told my friend a somewhat subdued (as not to get him too mad) "I told you so". Because of this he has elected to forgo room mates all together and instead pay the extra rent for some peace of mind.

When I saved up money for my place I lived in a van. May or may not be practical in your case, what may be more practical is finding a cheap mobile home and moving it into a park. When I went out west there were parks with campers parked in them. My cousin did that route for a couple years while she was going to college. I don't know if there are similar setups in PA. I have rented three different places, two of which had room mate situations. The first time I went out on my own I lived with 8-9 other people (depending on the week) in a huge three story house. It was absolutely awful but at least the rent was cheap (160 bucks all utils included). Second place I cleaned up and did repair work in exchange for free rent. The third time I rented for only a month. At the time I had no wood for my furnace and heating my home was so expensive that it was actually cheaper for me to rent than to heat the place (rent was 150 with all utils included). The monthly mortgage on the place I live at now is 200 bucks a month. It is less than what most people pay for rent even with a room mate. There are very few people I'd let move in, I could count them on half of one hand.

[arabian knight]

I lived with some friends for nearly a year while in AZ. Had nothing in writing, just a good friendship, and a hand shake.
And then I finally found a place, but even now if they move for 2 months during next winter, who did they ask if they wanted to come along??? ME
And this is 20 years after I lived with them, and still spend a month or 2 in the summer time with them, we have and still are the best of friends.