Layouts to Consider

What kind of properties should I look for?

Shared living creates unique requirements for a property and the first step is to make your property suitable for co-living.  PadSplit highly recommends that you familiarize yourself with all applicable building codes and secure all necessary permits for any renovation.  Counterintuitively, many common areas are a source of conflict and should be minimized or handled intentionally. As a general recommendation, there should be nowhere in any common area that is comfortable enough for someone to sleep in. The most productive way to address this is to convert common space into additional bedrooms. Often this is as easy as hanging a door in a cased opening or building a temporary wall. Most jurisdictions mandate that there should be no more than four bedrooms sharing a bathroom. There are limits on how many people should share refrigerators and kitchens, but in general, each marginal bedroom adds directly to profit.

Tips for success:

• Comply with all applicable building codes

• Secure all necessary permits for your renovation

• Ideally, no load bearing walls should  be removed or modified

• Ideally, no new forms of exterior egress should be added or window sizes increased, except as necessary to comply with applicable building codes

• Ideally all houses have two exterior doors. A front and rear door. 

• Look out for vaulted ceilings. Sometimes adding a drop ceiling can be the easiest route to address if adding partition walls. 

• Avoid garage conversions.

• Do not overlook parking. Depending on the location of the house, number of bedrooms and proximity to public transit, it is likely that a property has inadequate parking for the number of added bedrooms. Consider putting down a parking pad or adding gravel (especially behind the property, if possible).

  • Do not allow more than one car per room and set the home maximum at a number that will not upset the neighborhood (ie. does this street currently have many people parking on it already?)

  • We recommend having at least one parking spot for every two rooms if the house is within .5 miles of transit, and one parking spot per bedroom if it is not. 

  • We recommend adding inconspicuous barries that prevent parking on the front yard.

Don’t get greedy with room counts

The income from that 9th or 10th bedroom sure looks great on the pro-forma, and you might just be able to squeeze in 80sf with a twin bed and a clothes hanger.  But these scenarios rarely work out according to plan and tiny rooms just aren’t that attractive to applicants.  Shoving too many bedrooms into a house can often create more conflict between roommates, additional parking issues and longer vacancies.  Pretend that you’re going to give a full property tour to your mother or even a local political official.  What will be their impressions of your PadSplit home?  If you aren’t excited to show it to them, PadSplit Members probably won’t be very enthusiastic about it either.