A manifesto for people who run houses room by room
The platform collects the rent.
You run the house.
Nobody keeps the house’s books.
HouseBook is a back office for co-living operators with 50 or more rooms on PadSplit: a ledger for every house and a monthly statement for every owner, built from the payout files, utility bills and invoices you already receive. $5 per room per month. In early access. Independent of PadSplit.
Five founding seats. No payment on this page.
01. The platform runs the listing. The operator runs the house.
PadSplit lists the rooms, screens the members, collects the weekly dues and pays the host once a month. That part is software, and it works.
Everything that happens inside the house is someone else’s job: the power bill, the water bill, the cleaner, the broken lock, the room turn, the member who leaves the kitchen a mess. That someone is the operator.
02. Most houses are run by someone who does not own them.
PadSplit’s own help center says it plainly: “most PadSplit properties are operated by a third-party property manager.”[S1] The usual arrangement is a monthly fee of 8 to 15% of revenue, a profit split, or a master lease.[S2]
If you manage for six owners, you answer to six owners. Each one wants to know the same thing every month: what came in, what went out, and why.
03. The house has no ledger.
The money in is easy to find. Each host account’s Earnings tab exports a CSV of member bills and collections by property and payout month.[S3]
The money out is scattered across your inbox: five utility accounts per house, a cleaner who invoices by text, a handyman who sends a photo of a receipt, a supply run on a personal card. Nobody joins the two halves, so nobody can tell you what a room in a particular house actually nets.
04. The owner has no statement.
So the operator builds one. In a spreadsheet, at night, at the start of every month, once per owner. It takes hours, it is never quite the same twice, and the receipts live somewhere else.
The statement is the operator’s product. It is what an owner reads when deciding whether to give you a second house, or take the first one away.
05. The utility spike has a rule, and the rule wants paperwork.
Members pay one all-in price. When a bill jumps, a host can ask PadSplit to pass the excess through, but only for the part above 15% over the previous month, never for internet, and only with four documents: the bill, last month’s bill, the bill from the opposite season, and proof of a related maintenance check. PadSplit reviews it and decides who pays.[S4]
Most of those documents are already in your inbox. Nobody puts them together in time.
- This month
- Last month
- Opposite season
- Maintenance proof
06. What HouseBook does.
Three steps. No new habits.
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Step 1. Forward
Send the payout CSV, the utility bills and the invoices to your own HouseBook address, as they arrive.
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Step 2. Ledger
Every document becomes a line in the right house’s ledger: revenue per room, utilities, cleaning per turn, repairs, platform fees, net per room. Each number links back to its source.
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Step 3. Statement
On the 1st, each owner gets a statement with every cost and its receipt attached, your fee, and net to owner, as a PDF and a link.
What is included
- A ledger for every house, with net per room per month
- A monthly statement for every owner you manage for, with receipts attached
- A portfolio view across every owner and every house
- A flag when a utility bill crosses the 15% line, with the four-document pack assembled and a draft request ready for you to send
- Houses you run off PadSplit in the same ledger
- Full data export, any time
Illustration only. A fictional house with made-up figures.
- Payout CSV
- Utility bills, 5 accounts
- Cleaner invoices, 4 visits
- Repair invoice, 1
- Your fee, set once
| Member payouts | $5,950 |
|---|---|
| Platform fees | −$520 |
| Utilities (5 accounts) | −$610 |
| Cleaning, 4 visits | −$320 |
| Repairs, 1 invoice | −$145 |
| Management fee | −$540 |
| Net to owner | $3,815 |
07. What HouseBook will never do.
- NeverList rooms, screen applicants or message members.
- NeverCollect rent or dues, or bill a member on PadSplit’s platform.
- NeverHelp anyone rent a PadSplit room off the platform. PadSplit’s host agreement gives it exclusive tenancy of the whole property, and HouseBook keeps to that.[S5]
- NeverAsk for your PadSplit password, or scrape any website. You forward files you already have.
- NeverPretend to be PadSplit. HouseBook is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by PadSplit.
08. The price.
HouseBook
$5per room per month
Minimum 25 rooms. Billed monthly. No setup fee. Cancel any time. Export everything.
Includes: ledgers, owner statements, the utility pack, the portfolio view.
100 rooms × $5 = $500 a month
Design partner, first six months:
Five founding design partners
Your first month’s ledger and owner statements are prepared from your own forwarded files, free. Then $2.50 per room per month for six months. In return: a short weekly check-in, and permission to use your documents to build the parsers.
In the UK, room-by-room landlords have had software of their own for years. COHO lists from £1 per room per month.[S6] US operators have a spreadsheet.
09. Questions.
09.1Is HouseBook part of PadSplit?
No. HouseBook is an independent product for operators who list on PadSplit. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by PadSplit, and it never speaks to members on anyone’s behalf.
09.2Do I have to give you my PadSplit login?
No. You, or a co-host with finance access, download the Earnings CSV from each host account and forward it with your bills and invoices. HouseBook never logs in to PadSplit and never scrapes it.
09.3Does HouseBook bill members for utility overages?
No. Only PadSplit can bill a member. HouseBook spots a bill that crosses the 15% line and assembles the documents PadSplit asks for. You send the request, and PadSplit decides.
09.4What counts as a room?
Every bedroom in a house you track in HouseBook on the 1st of the month, occupied or not. The minimum is 25 rooms, so a 100-room book is $500 a month.
09.5I also run houses that are not on PadSplit. Can they go in?
Yes, as separate houses in the same ledger. A house listed on PadSplit stays entirely on PadSplit. HouseBook never mixes off-platform rooms into it.
09.6Is the owner statement an accounting or tax document?
No. It is a management report built from the documents you supply, with each figure linked to its source. Your accountant or broker still owns your books, tax filings and any trust-account records.
09.7What happens to my documents and my members’ details?
Your files are stored privately for your account only. Member names are removed when payout files are imported, because the ledger only needs rooms and amounts. You can export or delete everything at any time.
09.8When does it open?
HouseBook is in early access. The first five operators start as design partners, and everyone else joins the list in the order they applied. No date is promised until the first statements are right.
10. Apply for a design-partner seat.
Tell us about your book. It takes two minutes. Nothing is charged, and you will hear back from the founder by email.
Application received.
Thank you. The founder reads every application and will email you within two business days. If you asked for a design-partner seat, that email explains how to forward one month of files. Nothing has been charged.
HouseBook is independent of PadSplit.
Sources
- [S1]PadSplit Help Center, “Can I operate a PadSplit on my own?”
- [S2]PadSplit Help Center, “Can I hire a team to run my PadSplits?”
- [S3]PadSplit Help Center, “Which Member collections are included in a specific Host payout?”
- [S4]PadSplit Help Center, “I received a higher than usual utility bill. What should I do?”
- [S5]PadSplit Help Center, Owner responsibilities
- [S6]Capterra UK, COHO listing