Splitting a 5x5 Reno Apartment: The Real Cost Per Person

A 5x5 Reno apartment is the floor plan UNR students name more than any other when they go looking for a room: five bedrooms, five bathrooms, one shared kitchen, and a rent figure that looks dramatically better divided by five than it does on its own. The catch is that dividing by five only works if you know for certain what the quoted number covers, and that is not always written down clearly. This post runs the real arithmetic on listings posted near campus right now, each of which you can open on the UNR off-campus housing page.

For reference while you read: the midpoint rent students in this market reported in recent housing posts was a median of $785 per person per month. Hold every per-person figure below up against that number - one of them lands under it and one lands nearly $600 over.

Begin your search at Off-Campus Universe, where you can browse current listings near Reno, filter by bedroom count and distance from campus, and open each property's own page for the price and floor plan recorded against it. Every number that follows comes from one of those pages.

The listing in this set closest to that floor plan is 4 Bdrm/4 Bath Townhouse 5 min from UNR!. It is recorded as a furnished 4bd/4ba at $715/month, five to ten minutes from campus by car, and it is marked as rented by the room, so $715 is one tenant's rent for a private room rather than a total to divide. That is $70 under the $785 median, and the cheapest per-person figure anywhere in this set. It has one bedroom and one bathroom fewer than a 5x5, but the same bathroom-per-bedroom layout. Ask the landlord to state in writing what the $715 covers, how utilities are split, and whether each tenant signs an individual lease.

The other three listings give you the comparison. The gravitate Reno - recorded with exactly that capitalization - is a 1bd/1ba apartment at $990/month, less than five minutes from campus. One person, $990 a month, $205 above the median, and that is simply the price of not splitting anything with anyone. Furnished Apt. Monthly Lease is a Studio/1ba at $1,375/month, five to ten minutes out; it carries the highest per-person figure here, $590 above the median, and what the premium buys is furniture and a month-to-month term rather than square footage - a reasonable trade for one semester, an expensive one across two years. Bright & Beautiful house near UNR is a 2bd/1ba house at $2,300/month, five to ten minutes away; split two ways that is $1,150 each, $365 above the median, and a two-bedroom with one bathroom means one shower between two people on the same class schedule.

Line them up and the spread is stark. Renting a room in the 4bd/4ba, one person pays $715 a month; two people in the house pay $1,150 a head. That is a $435 per-person difference every month, or $5,220 over a twelve-month lease, in the same city at a similar commute. That gap is the entire reason bathroom-per-bedroom floor plans keep coming up in student housing posts, and it is also why the per-unit-or-per-bed question deserves a written answer before anybody signs.

Where UNR Students Look, and What Each Area Costs in Time

The blocks immediately around campus - North Virginia Street, Sierra Street and the streets running off Evans Avenue - are the walkable core, and they are mostly older houses and small apartment buildings rather than large complexes. South of campus toward the Wells Avenue neighborhood you get more single-family stock at somewhat lower prices, with a short drive or bus ride to class. Midtown, running down South Virginia Street, is where a lot of upperclassmen end up: it is a few minutes further out, it has the restaurants and bars, and rents sit between the campus core and the suburbs. The Old Southwest has the city's nicest older housing and prices to match. Push northwest, or across the line into Sparks, and you will find the lowest rents in this market, but you are committing to a car and to I-80 or North McCarran traffic twice a day.

Parking deserves its own sentence, because it comes up constantly in UNR housing conversations. A permit is a real annual cost and availability is not guaranteed, so before you take a place that requires driving, price the permit and find out where it actually lets you park. And check what winter does to your commute: Reno gets real snow, and a hill that is nothing in September is a different proposition in January at 7:30am.

5x5 Reno: What Five People Actually Owe Each Month

The appeal of a 5x5 Reno lease is the division, but the division is where the thinking should start, not stop. Take the whole-unit rent, divide it by five, and that is each person's share of rent. Now add the rest. Utilities in a five-bedroom townhouse are split five ways, which helps, but five people run five schedules and the heating bill through a Reno winter is not trivial - agree up front who holds the account and how the bill gets collected each month, because chasing four people for $40 is how house friendships end. Add the security deposit, which on a unit this size is a substantial sum to assemble at once and an even more substantial one to get back fairly at the end. Add furniture for the shared spaces, which nobody budgets for and which ends up being bought by whoever has a car. Then think about the risk that actually bites: on a single joint lease, if one of the five leaves mid-term, the remaining four owe the full rent between them, which raises each person's share by 25 percent. Ask whether the lease is joint or individual, and if it is joint, agree in advance as a group what happens if somebody needs out.

Four Things to Settle Before Five People Sign One Lease

• Get the rent basis in writing. Have the landlord state whether the quoted figure is the total for the unit or the rent for one bedroom. On a five-bedroom, the per-bedroom reading costs each person five times the whole-unit reading, and no verbal answer is worth that much.

• Ask whether the lease is joint or individual, and what happens if one person leaves. On a joint lease the four who stay carry the whole rent, a 25 percent jump in each share, so decide as a group in advance how you would handle it and put that agreement in writing between yourselves.

• Treat the den as a den until the landlord says otherwise in writing. Confirm the maximum number of residents the lease permits before anyone plans on an extra roommate, and do not price your share on the assumption that the den counts.

• Nail down utilities, deposits and the move-out process. Ask which utilities are included, whose name goes on the accounts, how the deposit is returned when five people move out on different days, and what the landlord charges for cleaning or damage so you can agree how to divide it.

Ready to find your place? Browse all listings at Off-Campus Universe.

This article is provided by an independent housing resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the University of Nevada, Reno.