How to Divide Power Tools When Roommates Move Out (2026)

You bought the drill together during the “let’s mount our own shelves” phase. Then the circular saw showed up for the desk build. Somewhere along the way there’s a Dewalt battery no one remembers ordering. Now the lease is up and one of you has to figure out who leaves with the tools.

Dividing power tools when roommates move out comes down to three questions: who paid, who used it, and who has the space to store it. Answer those and the split writes itself. Skip them and you’ll be arguing about a $90 drill for three weeks.

Who actually owns the tools?

Start with the receipts. If one person put every tool on their card and everyone Venmoed their share, whoever paid on the card is legally the owner — but morally, everyone who paid in owns a percentage.

Walk through each item:

• Bought before you lived together: Belongs to whoever bought it. Not up for discussion.
• Bought together, everyone paid equally: Shared, needs to be divided.
• Bought by one person, others paid them back: Shared, needs to be divided.
• Bought by one person, no one else paid in: Belongs to the buyer.

If you never tracked it — very likely — reconstruct it from Venmo, Zelle, or bank history. Search “drill” or “Home Depot” for the last two years. It’s faster than arguing from memory.

What’s the fairest way to split the actual tools?

You have three real options. Pick one and stick with it, don’t hybrid it.

Option 1: Snake draft. List every shared tool. Whoever needs a tool most goes first, then alternate picks. Simple, no money changes hands, everyone leaves with a set they’ll actually use.

Option 2: One person keeps everything, buys the others out. Best when one of you is moving into a house and the others are going back to apartments where a miter saw makes no sense. Calculate current used value (roughly 50–70% of retail after a couple years), divide by original contribution percentage, that’s the buyout.

Option 3: Sell everything, split the cash. Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp the whole set, split the payout by what each person originally contributed. Clean and unemotional. Best when nobody urgently needs the tools going forward.

Who gets the drill?

The drill is the most-fought-over item because everyone thinks they need it. Here’s the truth: 90% of the time, a $40 replacement drill from Ryobi will do everything the average person needs. Only one person needs the “real” drill.

Ask honestly: who’s actually going to use it in the next year? The one who says “I have a specific project” beats the one who says “just in case.” Everyone else can buy their own $40 drill and stop arguing.

Same logic for the vacuum, the ladder, the toolbox itself. Whoever’s about to actually use it gets it; everyone else takes the buyout.

What about the batteries and chargers?

This is where it gets stupid. Cordless tool systems (Dewalt, Milwaukee, Ryobi, etc.) share batteries — so splitting a drill and a saw between two people means one of them ends up with tools that don’t have power.

Rule: whoever gets a tool from the system also gets a battery and a charger. If you can’t afford to split the batteries evenly with the tools, sell the whole system and everyone starts fresh with their own kit. Half a Dewalt system is worse than no Dewalt system.

Do you need this in writing?

Yes, and it takes two minutes. A shared Google Doc or a screenshot of a note listing every tool and who’s taking it. Both of you initial it. Done.

This isn’t about not trusting each other. It’s about the version of you six months from now who forgot the drill was part of a buyout and thinks your ex-roommate stole it. Written record kills that ambiguity.

For the rest of the move-out — furniture, kitchen stuff, cleaning supplies — the same “who paid, who uses it, who has room” logic works. Here’s the full guide on splitting furniture at move-out and how to divide kitchenware.

How homies makes this painless

homies logs shared purchases from the day you buy them, with contribution percentages baked in. When the lease ends, it spits out a move-out sheet that tells you who owns what, what the fair buyout is at today’s used value, and who takes home the drill vs. the cash. Bill splitting, chore tracking, and AI mediation for the exact “wait, whose is this?” moment.

rooming, minus the drama. Join the waitlist at joinhomies.app.