Setting these up in RentMaxPro is no harder than any other rental arrangement.
Students can be accommodated in two ways:
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A bunch of friends jointly rent a single rental unit, in which case they are all named on the lease together. If one decides to leave, the others still have to pay the full rent. If they default, then you can go after them individually with each one of them be at risk for paying the entire amount if their friends don’t.
Make sure that you make this completely clear to the friends before they sign the lease. Also be clear that if they find a replacement for the one that moved out, you will need to approve them before they can move in.
Set this up as one rental unit with one lease that has multiple named tenants.
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Each student (or couple) rents his own room and enjoys the use of the common areas. In this case if one of them moves out, then it will be the Landlord’s job to find a replacement. This is then the same situation as a rooming house and has the same downsides in that you may end up with strangers sharing the common spaces.
Set this up as multiple rental units with one tenant (or a couple) on each lease.
A Rooming House is when you have multiple people that each rent a room (rental unit) in a house (building), and have access to a shared kitchen, bathroom etc. Each person (or couple) will have a separate lease. If they defualt or move out, that is the Landlord’s concern and does not affect the other residents.
The challenge with rooming houses is that you have many strangers living together who somehow have to get along with each other, keep the place clean, share a refrigerator etc. which can often lead to disputes that need the Landlord’s intervention to resolve. On the other hand, the profit margins can be greater that in more normal rental arrangements.
Set this up as one building with multiple rental units, each with its own lease. At present it is not possible to set this up as one building (e.g. apartment block) with multiple ‘rooming houses’ (apartments) which each have multiple rental units (rooms) that each have a separate lease. You would have to have cut out the middle layer. The only down side to this is that it does not separate the expense and income for each apartment and would just lump it all together as the one building.
