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Have you ever noticed that the amount of money it costs to
rent a one-bedroom apartment and a two-bedroom apartment are very similar? In
fact, two-bedroom apartments are often a mere $100 more per month. While it’d
be nice to have the extra space, sometimes it just isn’t worth the additional
cost. Unless, of course, there was some way to subsidize some of that cost by
renting out one of the rooms.
Here’s an idea: Next time you’re looking for an apartment,
choose one with an extra room or two, especially if you live in and around a
large urban centre. Why? Because you can rent the spare room(s) out on AirBNB.com,
a site that posts room rentals by the day,
for free and make some or perhaps even alll of your rent back. Here’s how it works:
“The law is so imbalanced in favour of the tenants the small landlord doesn’t have a chance,” Harry Fine, a paralegal, tells the National Post. “Every small landlord case is a nightmare. They get into business because their realtor says a property has income potential but they forget that it is a business – and a highly regulated business.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that the law works in favour of the tenant. In fact, every single time I write a rent-related article, the comment section inevitably gets filled up with angry remarks made by jaded and disgruntled landlords. The first few times I read these comments I thought nothing of it. I mean, people complain all the time. After a while, though, what they were saying started making sense. As a renter myself, I tend to write about issues that I can relate to. But every once in a while, you see something that’s so unfair, you just have to comment.
Times they are a’ changing, and real estate professionals know it. Home buyers and sellers are tired of paying ridiculous commission rates for real estate services – rates that can sometimes set them back tens of thousands of dollars. In Vancouver, for instance, where the average home costs $621,000 and commission rates are 7% on the first $100,000 and 3.5% thereafter, a buyer pays $20,025 for the services provided by that realtor. It’s no wonder that people are challenging the system and offering up new, more competitive, ideas.
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July 2012
