Re: He rents out his apartment, shop etc" or "He has rented out his apartment, shop e
If someone gives their apartment, shop, room etc on rent to someone then we say "He rents out his apartment, shop etc" or "He has rented out his apartment, shop etc". But if someone "lives on rent" then we say say "He has rented his apartment" or "He rents his apartment". Am I correct? We can also say "He runs a rented shop". Is it correct?
I have some time today, so let's unpack this.
"
He rents his apartment"
is ambiguous mostly because here we are forced to try to understand this sentence as a stand-alone. Usually, context will make it quite clear. There are two situations possible with apartments and rent:
A. He owns an apartment but he does not live there. Some other person pays money to him so they can live there.
B. Some other person owns the apartment but they don't live there. He pays money to them so he can live there.
We refer to the place where he lives as 'his apartment' even though he does not own it, the same way we refer to
a car's tires. We add the word
out so it's clear we mean A above.
1.
He has rented his apartment clearly means only A.
1a.
He has rented an apartment means B even though now we may talk about going to visit him in
his apartment.
2.
He rents his apartment can mean equally A
or B. We call it 'his' apartment whether he
pays rent or
collects rent.
There is a problem when we talk about the word
shop. As a noun, it can mean either of two very different things:
X. A small retail establishment: a fruit shop, a dress shop, a coffee shop.
Y. A commercial establishment for the making or repair of goods or machinery: a machine shop, a woodworking shop, an auto repair shop, etc.
We do not rent X. We rent a retail space or a storefront which can be any kind of a store or an office or storage space, etc. Once the business is established, then we may refer to it as a shop, but
it is the fitting and stocking of the space that makes it a shop.
It
is possible to rent Y
if I comes fully fitted out with the machinery to do that activity or run that business, but that is comparatively rare. It's possible also to rent
space in X or Y but again, that's not common.
It is possible to
"live on (the)
rent" of an apartment, but once again, it's fairly rare. One would have to own an apartment that would command rent higher than the cost of living in the place where one actually lives to generate positive income. There would be no financial benefit to paying to live one place and collect equal (or less) rent on another. Such situations
do occur due to logistical issues, but the owner is not 'living on rent'.
