My primary residence has five rooms and I rent out one bedroom. The roommate has access and can use the other two rooms which are for storage and home gym. The office and my bedroom are exclusive for my use. The rest is public area for shared use like living room and kitchen. What's the percentage of expenses (e.g. maintenance and cleaning) can I allocate for rental purpose to reasonably max deduction? If strictly based on the number of room rent out, it would be 20% (one out of five rooms). If based on rooms for exclusive usage, it would be 33% (one out of three rooms - two rooms exclusive for me and one room exclusive for my roommate) . Is the 33% reasonable for expense deduction purpose?
Another question is even though the room is always available for rent, there is time it's vacant in between changing roommates. I wonder if I could still allocate the expenses 365 days, or only the days the room is rent out? Since the maintenance of the house is a year-round work and the room is always looking for tenants, I wonder if I only need to take out the utility from the expense when the room is vacant?
Thank you!
