Seven-bedroom flat rented to 11 people for €26,500 a year

A seven-bedroom flat rented to 11 people for €26,500 a year

For supporters of this formula, renting by the room is more profitable than renting a whole flat. The problem isn't the maths, it's what the maths leaves out. A seven-bedroom flat converted to house eleven people, at around €300-400 per head, brings in €26,500 a year on an initial investment of just over €120,000. Its owner documents it in a series of YouTube videos — from "My BIGGEST Property Investment" to "+€26,500 a Year RENTING OUT my 7-BEDROOM Flat" — and in the thread he's criticised for being too pleased with himself. The conversation it has generated is far less enthusiastic.

Eleven tenants, two fridges and a dining area in the hallway

The videos show a textbook low cost renovation: the original bathroom becomes two with shower trays, the living room becomes a long table along a hallway and the supplies are split between two fridges. Eleven people are going to eat there. The starting point, according to the story that opens the debate, is a family fortune mobilised into bricks and mortar to make healthy cash. The word guesthouse comes up again and again in the discussion, and not affectionately.

It's not just a matter of square metres: it's the difference between a home shared by choice and an overcrowding business sold as a service to the market. He justifies it as meeting a need and doing necessary work, the most elastic argument there is, because any business built on someone else's lack can be presented as a favour. The question that separates the anecdote from the phenomenon is how much of that need the market itself creates and how much it alleviates. If everything is in order, the maximum occupancy is set by the square metres and municipal regulations, and that's where the awkward questions begin.

Is it legal to rent a flat by the room to eleven people?

It depends on the licence and each council's regulations, and that's where the case gets complicated. The strongest objection raised is that this isn't a residential lease, but a provision of services — a disguised guesthouse — with different tax and employment obligations. Some argue the owner is operating in a grey area: charging as a landlord but operating as a lodging business.

The difference isn't semantic. It changes the tax regime, insurance, habitability requirements and administrative oversight. And underneath remains the recurring question: if eleven fit here, why not twelve?

The business isn't as rosy as it's painted

The income figure impresses until you subtract what doesn't appear in the headline. The mortgage, with Euribor at high levels, eats up a good chunk of the rent; on top of that come home and life insurance, community fees, IBI (property tax), the rubbish collection fee, maintenance and income tax. Some calculate that for such a business to really work you'd need to inject around €1.5 million. The full breakdown, item by item, is what dismantles the movie-style narrative.

And then there's the risk no video shows: arrears. A single tenant who stops paying and digs in turns the exercise into losses. The profitability of room-by-room renting is real, but it's tied to daily management and conflict, not the passivity of a rentier. The detail that comes up most: if he rented the whole flat for €600 a month, it would be the tenant who sublet the rooms, and the owner would lose control over who moves in.

Living with the neighbours: the face that never appears on camera

As one participant puts it: the profit is his and the nuisance is everyone else's. The summary circulates through the conversation and describes a familiar pattern: noise, parties, constant foot traffic, deterioration of common areas and communities watching their building change nature without being asked. There are accounts of neighbouring flats turned into room-by-room accommodation that ended in fights, thefts between tenants and squatting when the owner stopped collecting rent.

Liberalising land or housing as a right: the underlying debate

The real discussion isn't about one specific flat. One camp argues the problem is supply: there aren't enough homes, there's too much red tape and anyone operating within the law and paying their taxes isn't the enemy. The solution, on this reading, is to free up land and make construction cheaper. The opposing camp replies that housing is a basic need, not an asset to trade; turning room-by-room renting into something chronic doesn't solve the shortage, it entrenches it.

In the middle lies an argument that's uncomfortable for both sides: until we actually build where it's needed, any reform that makes square metres cheaper will be snapped up by investors before tenants.

What could happen with this type of business

Here the analysis splits. If rental regulation is tightened — and the conversation mentions decrees in pogre and tax changes — profitability per room narrows and some operators pull out. If nothing changes, the format spreads and the disguised guesthouse becomes normalised in the market. No one dares put a date on either. What they do agree on is that the phenomenon doesn't depend on the character of one particular entrepreneur: it depends on eleven people having no other option than to pay €300 for a shared room.

If the rules don't change, we can expect this won't be the last video of its kind. If they do, the problem will be where to put the eleven inside, and no one will be happy about that process.