Which do you prefer? The modern condo with an open floor plan and cathedral ceilings? Or the pre-war rambling house with multiple rooms with doors, nooks and crannies.  If you are sharing housing with unrelated people, you should prefer the latter.

These spaces allow individuals to have privacy even when others are home. Think about it  – your housemate has a friend over and they are visiting in the living room. You have  a friend over and you are making tea in the kitchen.  In a house with doors you can close the doors and each of you have your own visit with your friend. In an open space – well the likelihood is that either the four of you visit together or one pair goes out or you simply don’t have friends visit you at home.

Older houses were built for bigger families.  Maybe intuitively they understood the value of separate spaces?

Years ago, I spent an expensive hour with a consultant who helped me list out all my requirements for a house.  As I left I was irritated. I thought I knew everything on the list! Why had I spent so much money?  Then I went house shopping. The list was extraordinarily helpful. No waffling for me!

The worksheets I’ve just uploaded (on a separate page) are designed to help you have the same experience. Spending time thinking about what you want and need in a housemate relationship helps.  Then write it down! It really, really helps!

Three of the four worksheets are for planning.  The fourth is to document reference checks.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Moving long distance presents a challenge.  How do you find a place to live when you aren’t there to see the place and to interview potential housemates? Some people make the trip for a weekend ahead of time and try to jam it all in and maybe they get lucky.  I’m sure some do get lucky. I wonder how many nightmare housemate stories come from panicked decisions?

In addition to using Craigslist and other internet tools to find place to rent, the Internet offers another wonderful tool for interviewing. Skype.  With Skype you can see the person which is a whole lot more than listening to them on the telephone and more than emailing or texting. It is said that a decision is made in the first 30 seconds of a job interview. I don’t know if that’s true for housemate interviews but I do think seeing is a huge help.

This interview is a step in your process. Don’t rent a space without physically seeing it. Use Skype to narrow down your choices and then get on an airplane to check them out.

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.

To thine own self be true

The absolute most important part of finding housemates that you want to keep is being really, really honest with yourself and others about who you are and what you can and want to live with.

This is NOT the time to wish you were different. Do not believe you can make someone else different. If you don’t like alcohol, don’t live with someone who has a drink every night. If you like to have a kitchen that is immaculate, don’t move into a house with a kitchen that makes you uncomfortable. If you really like playing music all the time, don’t choose to live with someone who says that they like quiet.

This may all seems obvious. Don’t let yourself slip because you like the person, the location is perfect for you, or the price is right. Since looking for housing can feel scary and be anxiety producing, it’s easy to fall into hoping and ignoring the warning signals. Don’t do it.

Do know the difference between what you MUST have in a living space and what you would like to have.

See future posts on the difference.

Roommates.com

This website offers free registration to post either “room offered”or “room wanted.” With pages and pages of testimonials, the company clearly seeks to establish itself as credible and helpful. J. Bennet reviewing the service at Reviewstream, comments. “Perhaps the best feature of roommates.com is that the service personally matches you with other site users based on your criteria. Often looking through Craigslist is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.” That’s a fair comment.

The registration for roommates.com is easy and free. It asks for the basics such as your sex, age, occupation, smoking habits and what you are looking for. It also asks for preferences and interests that will be helpful to you in finding a match. Clearly Roomates.com has experience in this area. The form asks whether you are willing to:  share a bedroom, share a bathroom, and/or to live with children. One question asks about cleanliness level. Another question is whether you will have children present. A final question asks you to choose one of 50 icons that describe your personality. You can include a picture of yourself if you want.

At that point you have access to all the profiles of people on the site, but only limited access. To communicate through the email servers, and to see complete profiles, Roommates offers three plans. A three-day trail costs $5.99, thirty days is $19.99 and 60 days is $29.99.

Once you have registered and logged into the system, you have access to the entire profile of others.

The log in process directs you to an email system within the roommates.com domain. You can communicate with potential housemates without revealing your personal email address or telephone number. This feature is an excellent first step in finding a good housemate.

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.