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Splitting rent in San Francisco
San Francisco households tend to have two things at once: rooms that are genuinely unalike, and incomes that are further apart than almost anywhere else. Those pull in opposite directions — room size says the person with the in-law unit pays most, income says the engineer does — so pick which one you are splitting on and say it out loud. Households that try to blend both without naming a rule are the ones still arguing in month six.
54% of the rent · 27% of what they take home
25% of the rent · 27% of what they take home
21% of the rent · 27% of what they take home
Opens on these exact numbers for whoever you send it to.
Opened on income rather than room size, because that is the split this city argues about most. Switch it and watch the shares move — the figures are placeholders to edit.
When one salary is double another
An even split in a household where one person earns twice what another does is not neutral. It leaves very different amounts behind, and the person with less left is the one who notices every month while the other genuinely does not think about it.
Proportional splitting fixes the arithmetic and creates a different problem: it makes everyone's salary a household fact. Some houses are fine with that and some are not, and it is worth finding out which yours is before somebody is asked for a number they did not want to give.
The in-law unit is a different apartment
A converted downstairs unit with its own entrance and its own kitchen is not a bedroom in a shared flat, and pricing it as one under-charges it badly. Whoever lives there has privacy nobody upstairs has. If it is on the same lease, price it against what it would rent for on its own rather than as a share of the total.
Somebody living in the living room
Common enough here to be worth planning for rather than improvising. The person in the converted common space pays substantially less, and the thing to agree in advance is not the discount — it is what the rest of the household gives up. A living room somebody sleeps in stops being available at eleven at night, and that cost lands on everyone.
Put an end date on it too. Arrangements like this are almost always described as temporary and almost never given a month when they stop.
Questions people ask
- Should San Francisco roommates split rent by income or by room size?
- Either works as long as one of them is chosen deliberately. Income splitting suits households where salaries are far apart and everyone is comfortable saying what they earn; room size suits households where the rooms differ a lot and the incomes do not, or where nobody wants to disclose a salary.
- How much less should somebody pay for living in the living room?
- Enough to reflect having no door, which usually means well below an equal share. The harder half is what the household gives up in return — the common room stops being common at night — and that is worth agreeing at the same time, along with when the arrangement ends.
- Is an in-law unit priced like a bedroom?
- It should not be. Its own entrance and its own kitchen make it closer to a separate apartment on a shared lease, and pricing it as one bedroom among several usually undercharges it by a wide margin.
Other cities
- Splitting rent in New YorkRailroad layouts, the windowless room, a flex wall that arrived after the lease. What actually makes an even split unfair here, and a calculator for it.
- Splitting rent in ChicagoGarden units, a sunroom counted as a bedroom, and heating that may or may not be included. What changes the fair share here, plus a calculator.
- Splitting rent in Los AngelesParking that costs extra, a converted garage as a bedroom, and roommates who are never home at the same time. A calculator and what to agree first.
- Splitting rent in BostonThe September 1 turnover, a dining room used as a bedroom, and mixed student and working households. A calculator and the agreements worth making.
- Splitting rent in AustinIdentical bedrooms with unequal bathrooms, four-person houses, and a summer power bill that dwarfs the difference. A calculator and what to settle first.
Agreeing it once is the easy half
Applying it to the rent, the power, the internet and the four subscriptions, every month, is the half that needs help. Pairly holds the split and does that part — no bank connection, no card to start.