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Split rent · worked example

Bid for rooms so nobody wants to swap

Instead of arguing about what a bath or a window is worth, each person puts a price on each room. The result gives every room to someone who values it, at prices nobody envies.

Each person splits the whole rent across the rooms by what each room is worth to them. One person per room.

Bids: what each room is worth to each person

PersonRoom ARoom BRoom CTotal
$3,000
$3,000
$3,000

Bids that don’t add up to the rent still work; scaling them keeps everyone on the same footing, as Spliddit asks.

Total rent
$3,000 /month
Sample numbers
Adds up to $3,000.00, to the centNobody prefers another room at its price. The smallest surplus is $83, as large as envy-free prices allow.
Make it a household

The link holds the whole split. Nothing is stored on our server until you make it a household.

Worked example

The numbers, step by step

Three friends rent a $3,000 three-bedroom. Room A is the largest with a private bath; Rooms B and C are similar. Each person splits the full $3,000 across the three rooms according to how much each room is worth to them. Ana cares most about the bath, Ben slightly prefers B, and Cam is indifferent between B and C.

  1. Ana pays $1,216.67: gets Room A: bid $1,300, pays $1,217, so $83 better off than their bid; Room B would leave them −$17.
  2. Ben pays $916.67: gets Room B: bid $1,000, pays $917, so $83 better off than their bid; Room C would leave them −$17.
  3. Cam pays $866.66: gets Room C: bid $950, pays $867, so $83 better off than their bid; Room B would leave them $33.
  4. Total: $3,000.00, exactly the rent.

Names and amounts are samples. Change any number in the calculator above and the result updates.

Worth agreeing in writing

This is the same idea as Spliddit’s rent calculator, which inspired it; housr’s own implementation runs in your browser and puts the result in a link.

A fairness test you can run together

Fair-division research calls a split envy-free when each person feels they got the best piece “in her own estimation”, as Francis Su puts it. Ask: at these prices, would anyone rather swap rooms? If not, nobody envies anyone. Bid mode makes that a guarantee.

Keep it running

Turn this into a household: rent posts at the agreed split each month, bills split by days home, and housr works out who owes whom. Roommates join with a link and a name.

Make it a household

When this split is fair, and when it isn’t

Fair when

  • People value rooms differently (a night-shift worker wants the dark room, someone with a car wants the parking), and bids capture that without anyone having to justify it.
  • Everyone bids honestly and privately. The method only promises that nobody would rather have someone else’s room at its price, measured by their own bids.
  • You accept the computed prices before seeing who gets which room, the same way you’d agree to the rules of a draw.

Not so fair when

  • If one person can afford to bid high on everything, they get first pick at a price they are happy with; fairness here is about envy, not about ability to pay.
  • Strategic bidding (shading your bid on the room you want) can move prices a little in your favour; the method works best among people who trust each other.
  • If two people plan to share a room, bid as a unit; the method assigns one bidder per room.

This is general information about splitting costs between yourselves, not legal advice. Your lease and your state’s law decide what you owe the landlord.

Sources

  1. Spliddit, Assign Rooms and Share Rent. Checked 2026-10-05.
  2. Gal, Mash, Procaccia and Zick, Which Is the Fairest (Rent Division) of Them All? (J. ACM 64(6), 2017). Checked 2026-10-05.
  3. Francis Su, Harvey Mudd College, Fair Division Calculator (historical page). Checked 2026-10-05.
Split rent

Three unequal bedrooms, one rent

When the biggest room is almost twice the smallest, an equal split means the small room quietly pays for the big one. Weighting by floor area fixes that in a way everyone can check.

Open the example Split rent

One room has no window. How much less should it pay?

Daylight changes how a room feels to live in, and most people would pay more for it. Give it an explicit weight instead of a vague discount.

Open the example Split rent

How much more should the master bedroom pay?

A private bathroom and roughly twice the floor area are worth something to whoever gets them. Price both openly, so nobody quietly subsidises the bigger room.

Open the example