A good roommate ad has five types of information. It should list the location and the rent. It should also include a description of the room for rent and the larger house,  something about yourself as a housemate, and a description of what you are looking for in a housemate.

The location and the rent should be easy. The descriptions take a bit more thought and care with the words you use. You want to make it sound attractive and you need to be honest.

If you’ve done spent time thinking about who you are as a housemate and what you want in a housemate, it is much, much easier to write your descriptions. If you are a neat-freak, you describe that. You want a housemate for whom living with a neat-freak is a good thing! If the room for rent is small you say so and also something interesting.  For instance, I used to rent a room in my house that was tiny. But is was also light-filled and the house was close to public transportation. Those benefits outweighed the smallness of the room.

The usual sort of things to list include ages of current housemates, sex, occupations (nine to five? or other schedule) attractive features of house/location/room, and something interesting that would signal to a reader that you would be a good housemate for them.   Look at other postings to get good ideas but remember that you are a unique person. Communicate that.

For now, Craigslist is the most popular way to finding a place to live. It’s free to posters (except in NYC) and it is easy to search if you know where you want to live. I used Craigslist for years when I was looking for people to rent the single room in my house. With the popularity of the site, some problems have arisen.

1) Scammers

There are people who try to take advantage of the unsuspecting. If it seems to good to be true it probably isn’t true.  Craigslist has a very important list on how to avoid scams and how to stay safe. The link shows at the top of each search page for shared housing. If you are using Craigslist, read those instructions and follow them.

2) Everyone sees the same posting you do.

The competition can be fierce. The person posting may be inundated with responses. So how do you get your response to stand out? You do it by writing clearly about who you are and what you are looking for. Do not send an inquiry that is “I’d like to see the apartment.”

3) Posters don’t reply

See above. Make sure that you have paid attention to what they have posted. If you are male and the person has clearly said they are looking for a female, they aren’t going to respond. Likewise, if you are a creative person and they are looking for a nine-to-five person. And don’t pretend. There’s no point to starting out on a lie.

4) Postings age quickly.

Especially in a tight housing market. Because of the ease of posting, it is unlikely that a posting older than a week is still a viable posting. Craigslist asks posters to remove their ads but many do not. If for some reason the available space hasn’t filled with the first posting, the poster will likely renew the post.