Hey guys, Max here! 

Have you been considering taking in someone as a roommate? Well, I've taken roommates for years now, and I think I have a pretty good system on what to do. I'm going to go over six steps to renting out a room that are super simple to use and you can use right now.

STEP 1: Ask Values-Based Questions

First step is to ask behavioral and values based questions. Some of these questions could be:

What does your life look like right now?

Yes, ask very broad, very open questions because you want to see how they communicate. Are they somebody who talks about their accomplishments, their work?

 Do they talk about what they do on the weekend and how they like to have kegger parties? Now, that might be a thing for your house. For my house, I'm not really much of a crazy party person.

The party I have is usually standing for hours a day and enjoying my crazy life. Right. Some more behavior and habit-related questions:

What's the normal day look like?

What time do you wake up?

I wake up early, so if someone is playing loud music at midnight, it's probably not going to work out.

STEP 2: Smoking

And most important, smoking. Whether they smoke weed, cigarettes, hooka, or even cigars, it's always good to know what they do and how they do it and what their thought is. I've had somebody ask one time. Smoking can do a lot of damage to a room. That was a big no.

STEP 3: Sharing

If this is your first go around renting your room, you have to really, really, really be okay with sharing. I went from nobody in my house to having a roommate, so I had to really start learning to share things like the sink, the bathroom, the kitchen, all these things.

You're things are going from your property to community property. That was a big paradigm shift, going from silence in the house all the time to people actually rummaging around and moving around. So you have to be okay with sharing.

So if you don't like sharing, renting out a room may not be in your best interest.

STEP 4: Have a Roommate and/or Lease Agreement

I made it a rule for myself to start out with one roommate. If you have multiple rooms like I do in my home, I rented out two rooms immediately, not really understanding that personality clashes are very, very real. Going to sleep early, going to sleep late, having people over vs. people wanting to be more solitary.

Talk about two people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum of introvert vs. extrovert. It was literally night and day. And it really taught me that when you begin, only have one person and throughout time, if you'd like to take in another person, explore that option and always, always, always give a sense of ownership to those who are already living with you and let them help you make the decision. Don't just make a decision for everybody and hope it works out because hoping in this situation is not very proven. Having a roommate agreement and a lease agreement is also a great idea, and make sure both parties or whoever's involved sign it.

Some of my rules are:

Quiet times from 09:00 p.m t0 7:00 a.m

and

Rent's due on the first

Having a word of mouth transaction is great if you're best friends and you've known them since you were five years old. But if you're taking in someone you don't know that much personally, then having rules is just another backup plan in case things don't go quite as planned.

STEP 5: Find an Introvert

You probably don't want me renting in your house because I want to talk to you all the time. Find an introvert. Find introverted people who enjoy having their own space.

However, you don't want a hermit. Those people are weird. I've done that before, been there, done that, no good. But having introverts, I realized, is always the best situation.

I've had both ends of extrovert introvert spectrum and I realized that introverts in regards to shared living space in my experience have worked out the best. So ask them, what do they really enjoy doing better, Netflixing and chilling or going out and meeting new people? That's a really easy question to figure out what they're going to be like. 

Netflix is not my thing, but the person who watches Netflix is probably the person you want to rent your room.

STEP 6: Engage with Them

Lastly, engage with them. Don't just take their money and say goodbye. Engage with them. Ask what their life, what they're doing with it.

Ask if they're in school how their classes are going. Even introverts really do enjoy genuine conversation and acknowledgment that people actually care about them, especially if they're younger people.

They probably don't have very much support, nor do they have many people they're speaking to, especially if they're introverts. So engaging as another buddy or friend has been really enjoyable and I've had some really good conversations with those over the years and really gotten to know them and I've learned a lot of things from those, so it can be a very good symbiotic relationship.