Write an agreement
The main things people disagree on when they share a property are “cleaning, noise, bills and other people’s other halves”, says Matt Hutchinson, a director of the property-sharing website Spareroom.
He suggests that you head off arguments by discussing how you want the household to operate and write up a document you can all agree on – and refer to in future if needed.
Think of all the elements that might cause problems and decide how you will handle them. This might include how you will divide up cleaning and other chores, who will be responsible for which of the big expenses, what counts as a household essential and what types of products you might decide to share, as well as when you all think is acceptable to turn on the heating.
Set up direct debits
If you are joint tenants, the rent is likely to be paid to the landlord by one lead tenant. They will also be the person who gets the deposit back at the end of the term.
Unless your rent includes utilities and council tax, you will also have those bills to cover. “To make things simpler, try to set all the bill payments up to go out on the same day as the rent,” Hutchinson says. This way, you know what everyone needs to pay for the month and money can be transferred to cover it quickly.
You can usually do this on your energy or wifi supplier’s website.
Set up standing orders to ensure the housemates who cover the biggest costs are not out of pocket for long. “We all pay our share to the lead tenant and then the lump sum comes out of his account,” says Bethany Forster Adams, a teacher living in a house-share of five in London. “Previously, we would send the money when we got paid, which for me was at the end of the month. But now we’ve set up automatic payments so that the lead tenant doesn’t have to wait for the money to come through.”
It can be helpful to choose one person to act as point of contact with the landlord or agency. That might, naturally, be the lead tenant, but it could be someone else on the contract. That way you can keep all your correspondence in writing in one email account, so that you have a record of all conversations and complaints. This will simplify things if you need to take matters further in future.
Use apps to split costs
Ollie Daw, a solicitor who lived in house-shares for more than 12 years before moving in with his partner, recommends using a cost-sharing app (for example Splitwise or Tricount) that lets you record what gets spent, and then calculates who owes what. Every time someone spends on a household item, they input the cost. “You have everyone in the group, and it keeps a running total, then works out how much everyone else owes, so it can be a good way to split bills, or the cost of anything else you buy,” he says.
Stasia Maltseva, spokesperson for Tricount, says the app lets anyone add their expenses and then alerts the rest of the group.
“For households with infrequent expenses, it can function as a simple tally. However, for those with many daily expenses, we recommend creating separate tricounts for each month or quarter,” she says. “This creates a much better experience where you never have to have an awkward conversation about who paid what, allowing you to focus on enjoying your time together.”
Tricount is free to use. It is owned by the Dutch bank Bunq, so the default currency is euros, but you can change this to pounds when you set up an account. Splitwise has a free version, but you can only record four spends a day – you need the paid-for pro version (£39.99 a year or £3.99 a month) to add unlimited expenses.
Once the calculations are done, pay people back promptly, no matter how small the sum. “Rents are pretty much at record highs everywhere in the UK,” says Hutchinson. “Just because somebody can afford to rent a property and share it with, you have no idea what their wriggle room is, and that £5 they spent on something for the house might mean they don’t go out for a drink with a mate that week. People are so squeezed now.”
Bulk-buy or subscribe
Subscribing to household essentials makes it easy to share the cost, and less likely that you will run out of them. Specialist suppliers will deliver toilet roll straight to your door, such as splesh.co.uk (£20.99 for 60 rolls), bumboo.eco (from £41.80 for 48 extra-long rolls) or whogivesacrap.org (£43 for 48 double-length rolls). With Amazon, you can subscribe to regular deliveries of a pack of 72 rolls of Andrex Family Soft for £33.49 – there is a 15% discount if you order five or more items for regular delivery, so you could add things like laundry detergent and bin bags to the order to save more.
If you have space to stock up, Big Green Smile sells five-litre refill bottles of Ecover washing-up liquid for £11.40 each (£2.28 a litre) if you buy four bottles (one bottle costs £12.40, but there’s a £39.95 minimum order). Even when you factor in delivery at £3.95, at the time of writing that’s cheaper a litre than Fairy liquid from Tesco (£2 for 654ml/£3.06 a litre).
Have a rule for partners
It can cause resentment if someone’s partner begins to stay over a lot. After all, it means an extra person using energy, hot water, bathroom time, maybe even communal tea and biscuits. Hutchinson recommends putting in place a rule (in advance, if you can), where you all agree on a limit to how often anyone can stay.
“Perhaps you agree that somebody’s partner can stay over as many nights in a week as they stay over at theirs. So your flatmate’s boyfriend might stay over two nights a week, but your flatmate will go and stay at theirs two nights a week as well,” he says. “It’s just that thing of having a basic rule of thumb, just putting a little mark down early, without being heavy handed about it, so everyone knows what is agreed.”
Be direct communicating
It’s almost impossible to avoid small niggles in house-shares – maybe someone keeps leaving their washing on the airer for too long, while another housemate never empties the bin when it’s about to overflow. The best thing to do is address it head on, Hutchinson says.
“It’s easy to get a bit passive aggressive or defensive when communicating. Back in the day, it was people leaving Post-it notes on fridges, and now it’s groups,” he adds. “I think it’s easy, in those groups, to say things you wouldn’t necessarily say one-on-one to somebody, or to leave a note that somebody’s going to read when you’re not there. But it is better to just talk to people, speak to each other kindly. It’s the simplest thing to do, but hardest to remember to do when things get stressful.”