When 29-year-old Polly* moved into a houseshare during her master’s at Durham University, it quickly became apparent that one of her housemates was far wealthier than the rest of them. “They had a completely different relationship to money and material things,” she explains.

Soon enough, the wealth discrepancy began to cause problems. “We would bring up issues like them inflating our bills with crazy heating use in the winter, or carelessly damaging other people’s things,” Polly recalls. Then there was the odd tone-deaf comment: “They once made fun of me for buying supermarket own-brand groceries.” Most bafflingly, they had apparently never done any household chores before. “They seemed to think tea towels and dish sponges were single-use. They would throw them away once they were wet or dirty, and were incredulous when we would ask them to stop and replace them.”

Polly isn’t alone in sharing a house with someone far richer than herself. According to research by SpareRoom, almost half (48 per cent) of flatsharers earn less than £30,000 a year, with 16 per cent on salaries over £50,000, meaning that many houseshares comprise people with drastically different incomes. Add different levels of familial wealth into the mix, and this can lay the foundations for serious tension: 43 per cent of renters in shared accommodation report that they’ve had issues in ‘wealth gap’ house shares.

It’s easy to see how problems can crop up when tenants under a single roof have drastically different financial situations. “Among the young house-sharers I’ve worked with, the most common issues are to do with cost of living and the management of the household: distributing chores, using – and saving – energy, contributing to communal items like toilet roll and cleaning items,” says Dr Mark Holton, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Plymouth who has researched student house-sharing. “Some mentioned that those with greater disposable income, or access to money from wealthier parents, were less likely to look after the shared spaces and items because they knew they could replace things easily if they broke – or they knew they could shoulder the cost of losing a deposit, if it came to it.”

This tracks with the SpareRoom data, which found that some of the most common causes of tension in wage-gap households include how much each flatmate should contribute to communal supplies (48 per cent) and debates over what constitutes ‘reasonable’ heating usage (77 per cent). Evidently, having a sizable discrepancy in income and savings with a housemate can be a jarring reminder of the extent to which money colours even our most mundane experiences.

Like Polly, Patrick*, 25, has faced problems with a wealthier housemate being too lax about bill costs. When, on one occasion, their electricity bill was £1,500 higher than anticipated, Patrick was anxious to look into why their energy output had seemingly skyrocketed. His housemate, by contrast, was sent £750 from his dad to cover the extra cost. “He wanted to pay it because he ‘didn’t want to think about it’,” Patrick recalls. “But I couldn’t ‘just pay it’, obviously.” He contested the bill with the energy company, a lengthy process which dragged out for three months. “Eventually it turned out that he’d put in our meter reading wrong, so it had added two years’ worth of electricity use,” Patrick explains.

“She worked part-time – but would often fob it off because she didn’t really need the money – but even though she was home the most, she was so messy because she grew up with cleaners”

Others have found that wealthier housemates are surprisingly stingy. 20-year-old Callum was shocked by how tight some of his richer counterparts were when he moved from Liverpool to London for university. One housemate had ‘special’ washing-up liquid – “it was organic and vegan and cruelty-free,” Callum explains – and would demand that her fellow housemates replace it if any of it got used. Similarly, when Maya*, 25, moved into a flatshare in London, one flatmate – who “had one of the highest-paying jobs in the flat” – was surprisingly stingy. “She would request 85p on Splitwise for something tiny – something that the rest of us would just buy and be like ‘that’s fine, it’s only a few quid’. I’ve found that sometimes the people who come from wealth are scabbier.” 

The idea that all rich people are miserly and selfish may sound like a stereotype, but evidence does suggest that poorer people are often more generous – and with this in mind, it tracks that a lot of flatsharers on the wealthier end of the spectrum are ill-suited to the give-and-take nature of communal living. Maya notes that she also felt routinely frustrated with another one of her housemates’ laziness: “She worked part-time – but would often fob it off because she didn’t really need the money – but even though she was home the most, she was so messy because she grew up with cleaners.” Patrick faced similar problems. “I suppose if you’ve grown up in a house with a cleaner, you don’t really realise that mess doesn’t just [magically] go,” he says. “One time my dad visited and cleaned up all of his dishes. He didn’t even say thank you.”

It’s arguably little wonder that wealth gap flatshares are becoming more common: with the average UK monthly private rent standing at £1,374 (£2,273 in London), even those on ‘good’ salaries are struggling to comfortably rent entire properties by themselves nowadays – let alone get on the property ladder – meaning more and more moneyed renters are in the market for houseshares. As Dr Holton points out, “renting hasn’t typically been a housing pathway for many higher-earning middle or upper-middle class youth until recently, so perhaps disputes based upon income and outgoing differences are only just starting to emerge.”

But while the housing crisis is squeezing even those on above-average incomes, the playing field is far from level. As a result, as the crisis pushes more people from vastly different tax brackets into houseshares (and social inequality in the UK grows more entrenched), it’s likely clashes over washing-up liquid, heating bills – and reusing tea towels – are set to become an ever more familiar part of modern renting.

*Name has been changed