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RentShare makes the bill splitting easier

September 17, 2012 | Filed under: Apartment Living,Featured,Money | Posted by: Kombucha

Living with roommates certainly has its ups and downs, and most roommates would probably say that among the downs is dealing with sharing bills and paying rent.

It’s great to be the responsible roommate who pays everything on time (or a little ahead of time, even better) but the bottom line is that each roommate needs to be responsible for their half of the expenses, and no one should have to nag their housemate.

We’ve taken a look at bill-sharing before, but now there’s another option. There’s a new technology solution that makes this task much easier. It’s called RentShare.com, and it allows you to set up automated payments, reminders, and most importantly – equal distribution of expenses – between roommates.

Here’s how it works:

You pay your rent online, using a checking account or credit card. Your roommate does the same. The landlord gets a check from RentShare, not from either of you. And your landlord doesn’t have to be notified that you are using this system or do anything to sign up for it – they are getting paid, so they are happy.

You can also use the system for shared expenses like food, household supplies, cleaning bills, utility billing, or any other costs incurred that need to be split. You submit the amounts of the expenses to RentShare and the system does the rest.

Right now the system doesn’t have a mobile app but plans to release one soon. Seems like the best part of this for most roommates that I know will be the autopay feature – rather than having to remember to pay rent, as long as you have authorized RentShare to take your monthly rent payment out of your checking account (and there are adequate funds there to do so) or charge your credit card, everything will be taken care of.

So, how does RentShare make money?

They charge a $1 fee for each rent payment, and a 2.8 percent surcharge if you need to use your credit card to pay your rent. Sounds like a good reason to build up some savings in your checking account. The other services – rent tracking, reminders, scheduling – are free.