I am looking to move into the city when my lease expires at the end of January. I don't know anyone there but will be relocating with my boyfriend and our dog. I've been considering the most recent case study MMM posted here:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/09/12/reader-case-study-young-man-saved-from-jeep-suicide/The advice that MMM offers is to move into a house and rent out bedrooms to friends. I'm considering whether this would be a good option for us or not and would like to hear some opinions about my situation. It would be very difficult to find housing as cheap as we currently have. Right now, my boyfriend and I are each paying about $300/month with all utilities included. This is the price for a 2 BR/2BA apartment with having an additional roommate.
The benefit of trying to find a house to rent is that we could potentially find something with a fenced in yard, which would be great for our dog. Anything with a yard at all would be awesome though. We also have 6 bicycles that require space to store. If we had a garage I think that would be ideal for bike storage, but if we found something with a big enough shed or with enough space inside that would be okay too. I like the idea that we could potentially have a nicer place with bigger kitchen area, yard, and bike storage.
HOWEVER, I would likely have to find random roommates from craigslist. I'm not totally opposed to that and have done that in the past but it is an unknown element.
If we could get a 3BR/2BA place for around $1250/month and rent 2 bedrooms out for ~$500/month with utilities included then we would then be left with $250 split between my boyfriend and I, plus utilities. I think we could probably count on 1 bedroom being rented, and then it would just be a bonus if we were able to rent the second bedroom. If that were the case, our total costs would probably be similar to finding an apartment for just the two of us.
I'm just looking for advice and any thoughts on this. Do you think this is a crazy plan? If we aren't able to rent out the rooms, then it would cost us more in rent.