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Comment by dkarl | Hacker News Reader

For a few weeks I was looking to rent a bedroom to use as an office, because my wife works at home and takes a lot of in-person meetings in our house, and also to help with work-life separation. I reached out to a few people who were advertising for roommates, proposing to pay significantly less in rent, with limits on the hours I could access the space and how I could use it (no sleeping over, no cooking in the kitchen, etc.) The people I talked to were very surprised at my proposition and clearly hadn't heard anything like it before. They said it sounded interesting, but they needed the full amount they were listing for.

I ended up renting an office at a coworking space (which was much more expensive) before I found somebody interested, but I wonder, is this kind of arrangement common?

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No, that type of arrangement isn't common. Very few people want to rent a bedroom as a business office. And most renters looking to sublease a room do so because they need the cash: paying them less doesn't solve their problem.

> I wonder, is this kind of arrangement common

No.

They want $X per month, they don't want significantly less than $X per month.

In Portland, Oregon, a private single-person WeWork office is around $600/month. There are almost no roommate situations that are going to be available for that price.

There are tons of roommate situations in Portland for around that price: https://portland.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=700#sea...

Around doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Many fewer available at $600! I also think you're ignoring that you're going to be contributing to utilities in many of those share situations.

I think the WeWork price now is $599 last I checked.

I've rented an "extra room" a couple times. My partner and I had rent control on our 1BR apartment, but we wanted extra space. It was cheaper to rent a non-bedroom room in a nearby house, than to lose rent control and upgrade to a 2BR.

Seems like the person renting it out would just be throwing away a large sum of money for very little benefit.

I think the benefit is significant. Based on my vivid memories of having roommates, not sharing cooking facilities and having guaranteed quiet and privacy in the evenings are pretty huge. Also having to share space in the bathroom with another person's toiletries, towels, and mess. People forgo lots of income in order to avoid living with roommates because of these issues, so I think it's plausible that they would compromise and accept less income to avoid the worst aspects of having a roommate.

> having guaranteed quiet and privacy in the evenings are pretty huge.

That's a benefit for other roommates, not the landlord. Unless the roommates are the ones subleasing, which is a lot less common.

There is 0 incentive/benefit for the landlord to accept an uncommon arrangement for less money.

I wasn’t talking to landlords; I was talking to residents whose leases gave them the option to sublease.

Edited to add: I was also possibly talking to residents who were looking to sublease illegally. I didn’t ask.

Interesting! I guess it depends on the person. I can see your perspective but for me having someone there part of the time would just be an inconvenience without the benefit of cooking together or socialising together. You're offering the lower risk option (in terms of the potential of getting a bad roommate) so while that probably works for some people most of the ads I see for roommates are looking someone to spend some time with too.

I can understand why they wouldn't cut you a deal. It would be virtually impossible for them to rent that space the other 16 hours a day. They want to capture its full value.

It's like being surprised that the car salesman doesn't want to take you up on your offer of paying substantially less to just buy the back half of the car.

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