The best time of year at UVA is in the early months of September and October when all of the different friend groups make the daring decision to sign apartment and house leases for the next year. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends. Around this time last year my friends and I hastily signed our lease for a lovely historic UVA home for 7 for a cheap $6480 a month. The quick nature of the lease signing meant we did not have time to determine what each person would pay for rent and finalize the rooms we would live in. Each room had features that made their renter want cheaper rent or made them willing to pay a little extra. One room still needed a door installed and was right by the front door, another was completely covered in windows and had an attached den area, one was basically a closet, and one didn’t have a closet. We all had different desires for the price and size of the room. Originally, we went on Split-Wise, put in the factors and saw the rent distribution. The reasoning behind their breakdown is discussed in this Blog.We realized that it made certain people’s rents higher than anyone was willing to pay (it was outside our triangle of possible choices).
Ultimately, one of my roommates was quick to the punch and made her own rent breakdown. She planned on living in one of the larger rooms. She reduced the cost of the larger rooms more evenly amongst everyone, making some of the minor adjustments to compensate for some of the smaller rooms. There were 3 larger rooms, 3 medium sized rooms and 1 small room. Her control over the agenda by choosing what the first thing we voted on was very critical. We decided on a simple majority ruling on the rent. Her offer was on the optimal line between the larger and medium sized rooms, but was not optimal for the smaller room. If the agenda had instead started with a rent distribution that was optimal for the medium and small rooms but not the larger rooms it may have passed. So, our status quo was outside of our optimal area of choices and ultimately the determination of which two groups passed the rent was based off the order of the suggestions.
1 comment:
That's a pretty brutal scenario. I might suggest, if you don't care much about burning the bridge with the domineering roommate (as well as the other roommates in the large-room bloc), that you follow the application of our class to your scenario just one step further: assuming you're in the small-room bloc, you could scheme with the medium-room bloc to rehash the rent prices in a way more in your favor. The new rent distribution may be non-pareto efficient for the group, but by striking a deal with the medium-bloc you could both pay less than you currently are and make the large-room bloc foot the bill. It might make you the Machiavelli of your house, but at least you won't be paying $900 to live in a closet. One caveat would be that the new distribution you arrange will likely not be an equilibrium. The large-bloc could make a counter-offer to the medium-bloc and make you pay $6000 to live in a closet. Perhaps it's best just not to rock the boat.
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