Do you have an extra room that you can rent out? Do you realize you can make money from your extra room? Well, we are going to share to you on how to gain extra money from extra room at your apartment.
Sometimes, as an expat living in Indonesia, you might have limited friends as you are new to the city. You might not have fellow expats to share the apartment with you, even if you have already rented a space to live, having one or two housemates will be so much fun than living alone in a big apartment. It is a different story if you have limited space only for yourself. Renting out your room will get you some new family, and also a petty cash! Follow these 5-steps guide to gain extra money from your extra-room!
Step 1: Know your space or room
The first thing that you should do is to know your space. List out what facilities that your space can provide to your future housemate. Do you demand privacy? Or you just want to share everything? If you demand privacy, then you better rent out your smaller bed room by keeping the master bedroom for you. If you demand cash, then the bigger the room, the higher the price you can charge.
Step 2: The price
Secondly, you have to decide the price that you would charge to your future housemate. It is surely a sharing-flat but you rent the place first, you have the authority to split the bill, and also decide the price for the extra-room. Then, the facilities that you have in your apartment or flat can also affect the price, if your apartment have more than one bathroom, a fine living room and a mini bar, well you can put the price slightly higher than the market.
Before setting up the rent price, you must do a quick online research about the price range that applies to rooms that similar to yours. For example, one unit of middle-class apartment in Jakarta is on IDR 3-5 million per month. You can go with IDR 2 million per month for one room. It will be very beneficial if you have paid the rental fee for the whole year. Let’s assume for the whole year you rented the whole unit for IDR 35 million, and you rent out your extra-room for only IDR 2 million/per month. If we multiply 2 million times 12 months, you will get IDR 24 million by only renting out one room. If you have two rooms available you will get doubled up. Interesting money, isn’t it?
Step 3: Know your audience
What kind of people do you prefer to share the place with you? Local citizens or fellow expats? Knowing your preferred housemate will help you in setting up the price. For example, if you prefer to have local citizens as your housemate you can’t put the price that is too high. For young executive in Jakarta, IDR 2 million is the most reasonable price for a room. If you want to rent out your room for some local people you should charge them with their range of reasonable price. It is a different story if you want to rent out the extra room for fellow expats. You can charge them above IDR 2 million. Let’s say IDR 3 million is the best price for a nice room in a nice apartment.
Knowing your audience might also impacted to the preferred rules that you want to set at your apartment unit. For example, if you want to have calm night without parties, having a local citizens will be the best fit for you as Indonesian do not like parties as much as other western countries. That is just for an example. In order to know if your housemate will get along with you, you can have a casual interview with them.
Step 4: Do a casual interview
As mentioned earlier, if you want to know whether you will get along with your new housemate, you should have an interview with them. You can ask them questions that might be important such as “are you messy person?”, “Do you like to be alone?” and any other questions that will reveal the personalities of your new housemate. In the near future, you are going to share the place with them, and we suggest having a nice chat with them will make you easier in making decision whether you want to share the place with a particular people or not.
Step 5: Go online
At this age of internet era, if you want a quick and effective way of advertising your extra-room you can just go online and log in to serumah.com. It is the one and only website in Indonesia specializing in finding a roommate. You can put a brief description of the room that you will rent out, the ideal type of housemates that you are expecting from and the price that you charge for the room itself. After completing the profile and submitting the ads, you can put your advertisement on your social media account to get broader audience. Good luck!