In the midst of the Seattle-area housing shortage, hundreds of thousands of vacant rooms in big houses sit untapped as many homeowners are either reluctant to have a housemate or unsure about how to go about it.

Larry Crites is a longtime rental property owner living in Seattle.

He used to rent out the upstairs section of his first house. But today, he said, he wouldn’t rent to someone he doesn’t know due to new landlord-tenant laws. If his relationship with a renter went south or they stopped paying, Crites worries he’d be stuck living with them during the eviction process, which can take months.

“It’s a different thing when it’s your own house,” he said.

Although Washington's new rent-cap law doesn't apply to tenants who share a bathroom or kitchen with the homeowner, Washington's Residential Landlord Tenant Act doesn't explicitly exempt shared housing situations from its laws.

Those laws, combined with local regulations, can be onerous and confusing, homeowners say. Plus renting out a bedroom isn’t financially lucrative enough to hire property management companies, which usually help landlords manage entire properties.

That’s why Brenda Beeson, who lives in South King County, said she is unsure where to begin. She is interested in renting out part of her home but doesn’t know what that would entail or how to find a good roommate.

“I’d have to get along with them,” Beeson said. “When you have a family member, you know their quirks and routines. But when you bring a stranger in the mix, that’s where you can have a problem.”

In other states and in parts of Washington, there are services to help homeowners match with roommates, do background checks and screenings and collect rents. But it appears there isn’t a specific service like that in King County.

That leaves homeowners trying to manage all those steps themselves, said Savenia Falquist, executive director of Home Share Oregon, a nonprofit in Oregon and Southwest Washington that helps people rent out rooms in their homes.

The organization works with homeowners, who are often over 55 and struggling to pay their bills, to match them with good tenants. Its services include backgrounding and screening tenants and drafting leases for homeowners.

Falquist recommends homeowners start with a monthlong lease before renting out a bedroom long term to make sure a roommate is a good fit. Screenings are important as well.

“What we hear a lot, especially people going through Craigslist or marketplace or some of the roommate matchers, is they got into a predicament, and it's because they didn’t do the background check. They didn’t do the vetting,” Falquist said. “That’s not the best approach when you’re going to share your home.”

Falquist said she wants to expand Home Share into King County eventually because she knows there are benefits to renting out bedrooms the right way.

A roommate can help people on fixed incomes pay bills. It also reduces isolation, she said.

Seattle real estate agent Danny Greco said renting out rooms can also help young people break into the housing market. Roommates helped him pay the mortgage on his first house in Seattle, a practice he calls “house hacking.”

“I think that’s a fantastic way to build wealth,” he said.

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