What do you charge for digs accommodation?

[Sarah Ryan]

Following on from another post where I got chatting about digs, trying to understand what is fair rent in digs land.

So we advertised our other room for rent Monday to Friday €150 with bills included. A gentleman contacted me about the room and was interested in a short let for possibly 3 months maybe less.

This suits us as a taster for seeing what digs renting is like and the fact my stepdaughters are coming up once (at a push) twice a month for the weekend.
He said he will be Monday to Wednesday night mainly, some weeks perhaps the Thursday and gone Friday morning.

Since it was not the full week I just said €30 a night given it would not be the full week and we settled on €100 for the 3 nights (he paid cash and I had no change!)
He is gone all day, shower in the morning, home in the evening, quick chat and a cup of tea and then he heads up to bed.

I am happy to leave it as is as this will be very short term, but what do other people do in this instance, do you say the rate is the rate regardless if you are there or not until Friday, what is the etiquette?

 

[Annieindublin]

A neighbour does this but she keeps the room available for her ‘tenant’ so they pay for the whole week, their choice to use it or not.they don’t stay Friday or Saturday but have a few times asked for Sunday night. Generally they are there Monday evening, after work, until early Friday morning. They can store some stuff in the room and she changes the bedlinen Saturday, so the room isn’t locked.

I don’t know what she charges. She set a weekly rate and doesn’t vary it if they are not there, been a few months and she’s happy with it. She isn’t sure what to do about Christmas. But if they aren’t coming she wants the room for her family to visit so she won’t charge them

 

[Leper]

When Mrs Lep was forced to resign her Civil Service job on marriage we had to find a new means of income. Consequently, we used to have English learning students from abroad staying with us. We had a spare room back then so no problems. The income certainly helped with our weekly outgoings. It was not just during the summer we took the foreign students, was all year round which included Christmas/NewYear. Most of our students were adults. I wouldn't argue against renting out spare room(s).

But, there are always buts:-
1. You'll never become rich on the project.
2. Your privacy becomes compromised bigtime.
3. There is extra work for you too, probably more than you think.

The Pros:-
1. You have extra money.
2. You learn from your tenants.
3. You become more street-wise.
4. You broaden your mind.
5. You'll appreciate your fulltime job more.

Mrs Lep used those years to go to college and get her degree which she used for fulltime work later.