Conor Hunt, an I.T. consultant in Chicago, writes with a dilemma that, while common, seems to be always unsatisfactorily solved.
Two friends — a merchandising analyst and a law student — and I are attempting to split up rent of a three-bedroom apartment with two common bathrooms. All rooms have their pros and cons, with the major differentiators being closet space and sheer square footage:
Room No. 1: 15 ft. x 15 ft.
Room No. 2: 12 ft. x 12 ft.
Room No. 3: 20 ft. x 8 ft.Rent is $2,200 per month and the apartment is approximately 2,200 square feet.
Simple math would show that one would pay per square foot, but that goes out the window with the ranking intangibles, and the fact that no one necessarily wants the big room.
The roommates threw out these prices:
No. 1: $800/month
No. 2: $710/month
No. 3: $690/monthSo given their prices over the course of a year, Room No. 1 would have to yield $1,080 and $1,320 more in value than room Nos. 2 and 3, respectively. That’s an insanely high premium for a little more square footage and a closet! It is still just a bedroom, after all.
How do you recommend solving this situation?
I am sure Conor and his friends will welcome any suggestions you have. I am not sure why Room No. 3 is considered worse than Room No. 2 even though it is larger, but I’m sure there’s a reason. In advising Conor, feel free to consider a few of our own suggestions:
1. Just settle it on a coin flip or, better, Rock Paper Scissors.
2. Rotate rooms every three months.
3. Price all rooms equally but tax Room No. 1′s occupant higher for household goods, or cooking/cleanup chores.
4. Give the smallest room to the guy least likely to have sleepover guests.
5. All three roommates hold hands over open flame; whoever lasts longest gets room of his choice.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
i ran into this situation years ago. everyone individually sets the price of each room so that the person would be indifferent to whether or not they were forced to take it. finding this “indifference” point means that you won’t complain if you were forced to take the room. average every roommate’s prices per room. draw straws to pick a draft order. since everyone had a hand in setting the indifference point, no one should have reason to complain about the price and room they were forced to take. setting prices beforehand reduces the “gaming” of prices for the room, since you don’t know which draft order spot you get. this is a take-off of the two people, one piece of cake problem, where one person cuts the cake into two pieces and the other person gets first pick of which piece of cake to take.
6. Keep rents split equally. Make the medium room the Overnight guest room (e.g. you have a guest you get the room), put 2 beds in the large room and the smallest room the communal closet. Do that for 3 months, see how long until someone caves just to say they’ll take the smallest room for their privacy’s sake.
Stop being petty and split the rent equally? If someone’s unhappy with their room, talk it over in three months and switch if necessary.
1) Find who is interested in room #1, and have them bid for it, with the minimum bid at 1/3 of the rent. Highest bid gets the room forever.
2) If the remaining two both want the same room of the two that are open, they bid for the room, starting amount being half of the remaining rent. Otherwise they split the remaining rent.
3) The law student — oops, I mean the last roommate — gets the least desirable room, but for the lowest price.
This seems easy. Lower the price of Room #1 until someone wants it.
I would have thought it was a simple auction situation?
Firstly assume that the rent will be split equally and each of you rank the rooms. It may be that there is one room that only one of you wants the most (of course it may be that you all prefer different rooms in which case problem solved!).
If that is the case the remaining two sharers (call them A and B) write down how much they are willing to pay the other one to give up the room. If A is willing to pay more to B than B is to A, A pays to B the excess amount that B has writen down plus some agreed figure (between $0 and the whole excess). C, the odd bod pays 1/3 of the rent.
If there is one prefered room you all write down the maximum premium you are willing to pay to occupy the prefered room. Again the ‘winner’ pays the premium writen by the next highest bidder plus between $0 and the whole excess.
The remaining two then follow the arrangement above.
I would think this should lead to the optimum room allocation/rent share. It’s a matter of equity how you split the differences? My instinct is to go 50-50, but even if it was only $1 everyone should be happy.
Or have I missed something?
Everyone gets 30 points, and each has to allocate their points between the three rooms. Nobody sees each other’s scores.
The rents of each room are determined by the total number of points allocated to it. (There are 90 points in total so effectively each point adds $25 to that room’s rent). Therefore each person will try to not make the room they want too expensive.
However for each room, the person who’s allocated the most points to that room gets the right of first refusal. That way each person will want to put as many points towards the room they actually want as possible.
I think those two factors would balance out and establish a fair price for each room.
1. Draw straws, three lengths. The shortest straw is roommate A, the middle one is roommate B, the short straw is roommate C.
2. Roommate A assigns a rent to each room.
3. Roommate B picks a room.
4. Roommate C picks a room.
5. Roommate A picks a room.