Renting a place with a relative

In the olden days, it is normal for siblings to rent an apartment with each of them getting one room. Take note, that one room will house the family, in effect the apartment will be the home of 2 families. But now, most landlords particularly owners of apartments disapprove of that setup saying the apartment has a maximum number of dweller and stipulated in the contract is the term 1 family only.

 

That kind of setup or arrangement as never been that popular here in the UK as nearly all landlords for quite a number of years now have had that written into the contract.

While two people sharing is common, two families sharing is almost unheard of.

 

Filipinos are clannish in nature, they normally stick to their families as long as they can. Although it is not a common practice to live with a sibling, family compounds are not a rarity. It is one big lot with several houses where the siblings reside with the big house occupied by the parents. That mentality is also applied to apartment renting sometimes such that you will see so many children... that were actually children of 2 brothers or 2 related families. That practice is being discouraged by most landlords in the urban area but they still persist in the rural areas.

 

Around here it still happens quite often. As a matter of fact, the apartment building I am not living in has two families living in one of the apartment. They have just immigrated here and they have set up a place together. The landlord doesn't have a problem with it. This is the second time in all the time I have lived in this building. I have never seen a lease in this area with that written in it but maybe some landlords do. It just seems to be quite common around here.

 

Like pwarbi said, two people sharing is normal. Two families sharing doesn't happen often. And I can see why, there is enough going on with one family in an apartment, I can only imagine the fuzz if two families were living in a small apartment. I would consider renting out a room (say, to a student) from an apartment/house that my family lives in, I'd never rent out a room to a full family.

 

I agree that in the US, sharing apartments is normal but nor for families. If I were the landlord, I would disagree with tenants who have 2 families because it is like abusing the house especially if they have little children who can do damage to the walls and other parts of the house. But as I said, having 2 families in one apartment is not a rare case here. That is one way of saving rental money for siblings particularly those who are from the province who went to Metro Manila with their families to work.

 

Many hispanic families in the US will go with such an arrangements. Some of the cities have occupancy laws because it is not unusual to have many family members both nuclear and extended to share a dwelling. I am not sure that two unrelated families would share an apartment though. However, they may live side by side in a next door apartment or something. It is more common where there are large numbers of people in a high cost area.

 

yeah now that kgord mentioned it, I can remember seeing this happen in some of the larger cities in Europe... mostly with immigrants. They don't have much money and the rents are really high so this is what they do... but yeah as a landlord I wouldn't want it. In the same areas I'm sure you can find students that would love to rent rooms as they too need cheap accomodation.

 

Even here, most of those who rent a place for a "clan" are those from the remote provinces who come to Manila to work. They tend to bring along not only their families but also their siblings and cousins. I have seen a small house with 2 bedrooms where the occupants are cousins with a total number of 12. I wonder how that 12 people could fit in that small house. My friend joked that there is one who sleeps on top of the fridge and another on top of the microwave.

 

Yeah big city problems. I guess the prices in Manila are significantly higher than in more rural parts of the country?