What you are trying to say is you are a really good person, a martyr, in fact. Anyone who doesn't understand what a great person you are for letting your in laws walk all over you is obviously a cold hearted witch.
This martyr-complex idea is all in your imagination. I never claimed that I was giving them a good deal only because they are family or that I would be evil to charge them more. You seem to have jumped straight into the political talking points game (about economic users and enablers), skipping over the part where you answer the question.
Let's get more basic.
How do you determine what's a good rental deal for family? The sense of familiarity changes the loss of value due to privacy concerns, and, most importantly in our case, it's easier to stuff more people into the same space because we are willing to coordinate activities such as dinner, games, and going to work. A stranger may be willing, hypothetically, to rent the first floor for $300, utilities included, but no one's going to share the house with 3 (soon to be 4) other people plus 2 or 3 dogs for $200 (including utilities), which is what I'm getting right now. Yes, my in-laws are getting a good deal, but so am I. $200 rent isn't easy to find, but neither is $400 (to be $600) for two 1/4 (or 1/5) shares of an old house in a neighborhood with houses that sell for $30k-$80k.
How do you determine how to split costs for common expenses that have decreasing marginal cost? The house is mine, so the internet and utilities are in my husband's name. The roommates add nothing to internet costs, and pay an equal share of water, electric, and gas. We don't charge for internet, but one roommate also pays for television without charging us, and we use his room as a common entertainment area.
Now, before you answer these questions, hold the armchair psychoanalysis, and put away your Mitt Romney "makers vs. takers" economic discussion flowchart. How do you determine what's a fair amount to charge someone for housing and for shared expenses when the economic relationship is more complex (in the ways I described) than the typical roommate relationship?
Or by cultural differences did you mean that I would never help my family because I'm what?
Perhaps "market difference" is a better description for your hang-up with this issue than "cultural difference". $150 is a typical market value for the rent. If that doesn't make sense, remember that there's no simple formula to derive rental prices from property values like you implied by saying that a $52.5k property value necessitates a $525 rent; it depends on local market conditions. So you can't say that rent should always cover the mortgage. Maybe that makes sense in places where the housing supply is constrained geographically or legislatively. Otherwise, the rental income vs. property value implied by this rule isn't sustainable because it leads to extremely high investment returns that would pull in more investors until property values increase or supply of rental properties increases and the market is again in line with similarly risky markets (e.g. large U.S. equity) in terms of typical yields.
If the property decreases in value due to market changes, you are out your down payment, while your roommates lose nothing.
You've got that backwards, to an extent. If property values go down, so do rents, but they're stuck paying the same amounts, which I've stressed are at the (current) market value for single rooms in shared houses in our area. On my side of the deal, I keep receiving the old rate even though other renters I could get would pay less in such a market (of decreased property values). Think about it as a stock that pays constant dividends even if the stock price plummets; by itself, that actually mitigates some of the risk of the investment ownership. In any case, capital owners are usually the ones risking their own money, and 1/15 returns are still typical. If anything, cheap housing is safer than stocks, so the returns should be lower.
This middle ground shit is just emotionally difficult and financially pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
I see your point, but I wouldn't call it "financially pretty meaningless". Their $400/month payments are about 1/10th of our post-tax income. So letting them live here for free just because we like them would be like going on a one-month unpaid vacation every year just because you don't like work. Not to "make excuses" or "be a martyr", but I would defend the middle ground because it's mutually beneficial, solely from a financial perspective. Obviously, their rent is less than apartment rent, so they benefit because that's the easily available alternative for them. On the other hand, the easily available alternative for me is to get less (overall) for renting to one person or couple while being forced to share the common areas more equally.
Anyways, I think I've got what I needed from this thread. The answer is that I am charging them a reasonably fair amount, and the only argument to the contrary oversimplifies my housing situation.
