{"id":70138,"date":"2023-10-29T22:23:25","date_gmt":"2023-10-29T22:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geels.net\/?p=70138"},"modified":"2023-10-29T22:23:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-29T22:23:25","slug":"the-perils-of-renting-a-spare-room-to-lodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geels.net\/beauty\/the-perils-of-renting-a-spare-room-to-lodgers\/","title":{"rendered":"The perils of renting a spare room to lodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>From smashed antiques to very hungry Italians&#8230;\u00a0The perils of renting a spare room to lodgers<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Sasha Wilkins will not forget the guests who burnt the bottom of her copper pans<\/b><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE:\u00a0\u00a0Stress of renting ages you TWICE as quick as being unemployed<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Red-faced and sweating, I stopped wrestling with the king-size duvet cover, removed my AirPods and listened again. Yes, that was the doorbell.<\/p>\n<p>Pulling on a sweatshirt over my sports bra and pants, I opened the door to find two beaming Americans and five enormous suitcases awaiting entry to my home a full four hours before the advertised 3pm check-in time.<\/p>\n<p>The advent of cheery Americans on my doorstep had been a frequent occurrence since I decided, several months prior, to rent out a bedroom in my North London flat to help with the bills.<\/p>\n<p>While I&#8217;d learnt not to answer the door in my sports bra after one review had referred to my semi-naked state, there was little I could do about international travellers fresh off red-eye flights.<\/p>\n<p>I soon realised that opportunistic early check-ins were the least of the issues I had failed to foresee. I&#8217;d been struggling with the increasing cost of living in London as a single self-employed writer living on my own. Without a partner to split the bills, the idea of filling in the gaps between payments every few weeks had the potential to be a fiscal lifebelt.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/29\/21\/77153827-12685945-image-a-13_1698615261252.jpg\" height=\"857\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>SASHA WILKINS:\u00a0Pulling on a sweatshirt over my sports bra and pants, I opened the door to find two beaming Americans and five enormous suitcases awaiting entry to my home a full four hours before the advertised 3pm check-in time<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/29\/21\/77153777-12685945-image-a-11_1698615231249.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>I still haven&#8217;t forgotten the couple who helped themselves to my copper saucepans and irrevocably burnt the bottoms (stock image)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s something plenty of others are now contemplating thanks to the crippling hike in mortgage rates. Spareroom.com, the leading rental listing site, has seen a 57 per cent surge in lodger-landlords registering on its platform this year, compared to 2021.<\/p>\n<p>But, if you&#8217;re one of them, I&#8217;d heed my cautionary tale.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s true, the government&#8217;s Rent a Room Scheme lets you earn up to a threshold of \u00a37,500 per year tax-free from letting out accommodation in your home \u2014 as long as you live there, too. This works out at about \u00a3144 a week \u2014 and you don&#8217;t even have to fill in a tax return. The challenge, as I soon found out, is finding the right kind of lodger. So, I turned to Airbnb to create a listing. I discovered there was no point renting out a room for less than three days because of all the laundry that builds up, and that a room listing has to be as detailed as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the otherwise charming girl who smuggled three different men in over the course of a week, an early lesson was to be clear about the number of expected guests and to ban any overnight visitors. I only discovered her extracurricular pursuits when I was replaying my Ring doorbell recording to look for a missing parcel delivery. While it&#8217;s a funny story after the fact, the idea of a completely unaccountable male stranger wandering around the flat where I was also sleeping gave me the shudders.<\/p>\n<p>The two main areas of contention turned out to be access within the flat, and cleanliness.<\/p>\n<p>Because I used my second tiny bedroom as an office, I&#8217;d decided to rent out my double bedroom, clearing out my possessions, and sleeping on the sofa bed in my sitting room when I had lodgers. Even though the listing was clear that it was for the use of a double bedroom only with no access to the living areas, I often came home to guests who had opened the firmly shut door to what was now my sleeping quarters, eating greasy takeaways sitting on top of my duvet on the sofa, frequently in the company of my drying underwear hanging up on an airer.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/29\/21\/77153785-12685945-image-a-12_1698615237721.jpg\" height=\"393\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Venetian guests ate half my birthday cake for breakfast, telling me afterwards that it was so nice to stay with someone who understood what Italians liked to eat in the mornings (stock image)<\/p>\n<p>I have now downsized to a cottage in rural Gloucestershire but still haven&#8217;t forgotten the couple who helped themselves to my copper saucepans and irrevocably burnt the bottoms; the nosy guy who ignored a Do Not Open sticker on a cupboard and smashed an antique teapot; or the Venetian guests who ate half my birthday cake for breakfast, telling me afterwards that it was so nice to stay with someone who understood what Italians liked to eat in the mornings.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly though, my London lodgers made fascinating company.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to a yoga studio down the road, many of my guests were doing training courses and were notable for their kindness. I still have the blue-and-white Spode bowl an English guest sent me from her own collection as a gift, and the thank-you card from some Belgians which made me howl with laughter. It read: we loved staying here, but have you ever heard of Marie Kondo?<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/femail\/article-12685945\/From-smashed-antiques-hungry-Italians-perils-renting-spare-room-lodgers.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From smashed antiques to very hungry Italians&#8230;\u00a0The perils of renting a spare room to lodgers Sasha Wilkins will not forget<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>US Entertainment News. 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