Homestay with more than 5 students?
 

Anyone running a homestay with more than 5 students? Just wondering what vacancy rates are like etc..

Vacancy rates how? Are you interested in starting one?

Don't u have to get a liscense or something?
I would think everything with home stay is a contract or something.

You would think that wouldn't you. Sadly, homestays are not exactly regulated. If you are paying and a tenant, you are covered under the Tenancy act; yet most of the International students are never made aware of their rights or anything. Homestays are a very very murky business.

Don't you cooperate with a school? So you can have your rooms filled year round even if somebody leave.

I'd think you can have as many students as you want as long as the room space isn't compromised (no sharing room or living in the living room). And isn't the rate all the same everywhere? I think 750/month including 3 meals/day is standard. I don't think the school make any money on that. Though when I was searching for an apt on craigslist, I've seen rate went as low as 600-650 but never lower than that. So 650-800 is the ballpark.

Just sitting on some property by the viaduct collecting dust. Not sure if this is worth the hassle yet. From google the vancouver home stay rates are 850 with 3 meals.

It's a ton less hassle just to rent the rooms out; if it's not too far from DT and you leave the living room unoccupied you can probably charge $700+utils per room. Homestaying needs you to cook 3 meals a day (or at least have food ready), so you need to ask if it's worth that extra $150/mo/person.

^^^ This.

...also, during the first few weeks, the students will tend to come home and eat dinner, but as they develop friendships and start to hangout together, they will tend to not eat dinner at home and you will end up with a lot of leftovers. Being young, they will not always call ahead to say they won't be needing dinner. Hosting homestay students can be a pain in the ass.

Thread cleaned up. Be careful, points abound.

Truth x 528509285209582035

My parents tried it for a year and a bit.

Never fucking ever again.

And I mean never!

lol homestays..not everyone is suited for this. Some can be easy to deal with and some can be a pita
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seriously not worth it as its like renting a house to young teenager, my cousin was a at home stay when he moved back to canada so i think u to apply to become one as once they find out that your a suitable host they contact u

I know someone who does this and has had really good experiences for several years. But they're doing it up in whistler through one of the mega expensive schools up there and that might be part of the reason why?

I don't know a huge amount about this, but I'm thinking someone needs to judge the suitability of the place for the students. I just can't imagine someone signing off on what effectively would be a homestay flop house. I think the goal is for students to join a family, not a fraternity.

many agencies do this, assess your home and the living environment of the homestay. some rate your place too based on what is available, private washroom, private entrance, etc. and price it accordingly. there are some homestays where you don't have to cook for them, you just get paid less b/c you're not providing food. some you just provide breakfast and drinks (not sure about lunch).

i know someone that used to do that assessment of the family/home and another that had homestays.

from the perspective of the students there has to be a good balance for homestay
those that choose to go with very Westernized families will stop eating at home because they simply aren't used to eating 'white' food all the time.
those that choose to go with asian families will tend to be more satsfied...however, their English interactional levels may be limited.

Not all home stays are asian kids.

My friend who does it in Whistler gets a lot of European and Middle Eastern kids too. Most of them pick the home stay (rather then staying in dorms) so they can get more acclimated to Canadian food/language and whatnot.

Unless they are, you know, not asian? There's a crap ton of Brazilians and Middle Eastern international students.

By the way, organizing homestays is not for everyone. Some students, especially Brazilians, can be a major pain in the ass. Be very careful, I know this first hand.

Do you need to report this as a supplement income? or it doesnt count?

What was so traumatizing about it?

yeah, because all homestays are asian right? :failed:

majority of the homestays I had were brazilian. It really all depends on what you ask for/agree with. TBH the middle eastern homestay we had was the hardest to deal with..Had to limit the food we cooked because of his religion, he spoke very fucking loud which made it hard to sleep at night, and the worst part was he barely showered so he stunk shit up. I'm not a racist, i'm just judging by first hand experience..plus i'm sure there's people like this with every culture.

tl;dr version: Some of the students were far too demanding while some were outright dishonest. One of them even went as far as telling the school we gave them expired food when in reality, she left it to rot on her own and blamed it on us.

In the end, the headache wasn't worth the $150/month in income. If not, less.

If you have all the time in the world to manage it, go for it. Make it a full-time job. My parents had day jobs. My siblings went to school. I was travelling back and forth for work. It simply didn't work out for us in the end. The amount of time & effort plus the headaches we had to deal with wasn't worth it.

lol do you hate when students expect you to do their dishes? pfffft

Holy fuck. Don't even get me started on that. I'm raging right now thinking about the many times that shit happened. And to have the nerve to complain to the school when we didn't take out their trash?! :mad:

Of the 7 students we housed, only 2 of them was very respectful and followed our rules.

Did i touch a soft spot :troll:


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