Room Rental Platform Fees: How CoRent's 5% Works

Room rental platform fees decide how much of each rent payment actually reaches you. On CoRent, the answer is simple: listing is free, the platform fee is a flat 5% of rent collected, and you keep 95%. There is no booking fee on new tenants and no management fee.

This guide explains what that 5% covers, who pays the card and bank processing costs, the one case where you cover a small bank cost, and how to check the math on your own house.

Room rental platform fees on CoRent, line by line

Here is every host fee, straight from the CoRent fees page:

• Listing your rooms: free.
• Platform fee: 5% of rent collected. You keep 95%.
• Booking fee on new tenants: none.
• Management fee: none. You run your houses in the app.
• When a renter pays a full month by bank account: their fee is waived and you cover the bank cost, which is 0.8%, up to $5 per room per month.

That is the whole list. The fee is charged on rent that is actually collected, so it moves with your income rather than sitting on top of it as a fixed charge.

What a booking fee is, and why there isn't one

On some room-rental platforms, the host pays a charge each time a new tenant moves in, on top of an ongoing cut of rent. In a shared home, where rooms turn over more often than whole houses do, those charges add up.

CoRent does not charge one. A new tenant moving into a room costs you the same platform fee as any other month: 5% of the rent collected. If you want to see how that compares with another platform's host terms, the CoRent vs. PadSplit page lays out the comparison.

Moe Mathews, who runs shared homes in the Richmond area and built CoRent, describes the reason on the About page: the platforms took a cut of every rent payment plus a booking fee every time a new tenant moved in. CoRent was built so hosts keep 95% with no booking fee.

Who pays the processing fees

Every rent payment has a processing cost, whether the renter pays by card or bank account. On CoRent, the renter pays that processing fee on each payment, and sees the exact amount at checkout before paying.

From the fees page, the renter's processing fee is:

• Paying by card: based on 2.9% + 30¢ per payment.
• Paying by bank account: based on 0.8%, up to $5 per payment.
• Paying a full month by bank account: waived, $0.

That last line is the one that touches you. When a renter pays a full month by bank account, their fee is waived and you cover the bank cost: 0.8%, capped at $5 per room per month. It is the lowest-cost way for a renter to pay, and for you it is a small, predictable amount.

A worked example from the host calculator

The host earnings calculator shows an example house: a 4-bed house rented by the room as 7 rooms, with $4,550 in monthly rent on CoRent. These are assumed amounts for one example house. Enter your own to see yours.

In that example:

• Platform fee: $228 a month (5% of $4,550, rounded).
• Booking fees: $0.
• Property management fee: $0, because you manage in the app.
• Transaction fee: $0 to you, because the tenant pays it.
• Bank fees you cover: $35 a month, assuming every renter pays monthly by bank account. That is 7 rooms at the $5-per-room cap.

So on $4,550 of rent, the platform and payment costs in the example come to about $263 a month. The other costs in the calculator, such as utilities, repairs, taxes and insurance, are the cost of running the house itself and would exist on any platform.

If you are new to renting rooms, start with how renting rooms in your house works on CoRent for the full process from listing to move-in.

What the 5% includes

The platform fee pays for the tools you use to run the house. According to the host page, on CoRent you can:

• List each room for free, with the area (city and ZIP) shown and the street address shared only after a booking is confirmed.
• Review applications from renters who have verified their ID once with a government ID and a selfie match.
• Confirm bookings, collect rent and handle maintenance in the app.
• Turn on shared utilities so each tenant pays their share of electricity, water, gas and internet in the app, on top of rent.
• Have the CoRent team import your listings if your rooms are already listed somewhere else.

There is no separate management fee because you are the manager. You decide who to approve, what the house rules are and how the house runs.

Fees, records and taxes

Platform fees and payment costs are part of your rental records. Keep track of them alongside rent, utilities and repairs so your year-end numbers are complete.

The IRS explains how rental income and expenses are reported in Topic 414, Rental income and expenses. Payment platforms may also report payments to the IRS; the IRS page Understanding your Form 1099-K explains how that works in general. This is not tax advice. Ask a tax professional how platform fees and payment reporting apply to your situation.

Check the math on your own house

The quickest way to see what you would keep is to put your own numbers into the host earnings calculator: beds, baths, whole-house rent, number of rooms and rent per room. You can change the cost assumptions too, including utilities, repairs, cleaning per move-in and the share of renters paying monthly by bank.

When the numbers make sense, create your free host account and list your rooms. Listing is free, and you keep 95% of the rent you collect.