Renting is increasingly expensive in the United States, with millions spending over 30% of their income on housing. Living with good roommates can ease this financial burden and lower annual housing costs, but finding a compatible roommate can be challenging, especially if you are renting out a room.
In this guide, we’ll discuss how to find the perfect roommates in a new city online and the best websites for your search.
How to Find Roommates in a New City?
If you’re moving to New York or another new city and don’t know anyone there who’s looking for a roommate, you’ll probably have to take your search online. Moving in with strangers is an option, but sharing a space with someone you don't know does come with certain financial and behavioral risks. Here are some tips to help you if you’re wondering how to find roommates in a new city:
Network
Facebook is a great local networking tool for your roommate search. Write a post in a local group or ask your friends and coworkers to introduce you to a friend-of-a-friend who might share your interests and is also looking for a roommate. Many cities also have subreddits dedicated to their housing markets, with frequent posts from people looking for a room to rent.
Alumni Associations
Contacting your alum association by messaging on its forum, online bulletin board, LinkedIn, or Facebook group can be helpful. Chances are someone you haven’t seen since graduating is on them, and there might be alums looking for a roommate. Having that shared college experience will be an easy topic of conversation to hit it off with.
Search Online
Several online platforms can sort prospective roommates based on your lifestyle, shared interests, and habits you list in your profile. Like dating apps, the more time you take to give detailed answers, the more likely you are to find the ideal roommate.
Roomie Match eliminates fake accounts and posts and asks users to complete an extensive questionnaire to improve the search process. Roommates.com is another free tool covering thousands of cities nationwide with an automated matching system. Diggz is a roommate finder app that connects like-minded prospective roommates with a matching algorithm, whether to find a room to rent or partner up to move into a new flat together.
Craigslist might not immediately spring to mind when searching for a compatible roommate. However, it’s an incredibly popular site, with thousands of ads for roommates nationwide at any given time.
Background Checks
Consider a background check on the potential roommate (with their permission). You can run background checks on third-party websites or in property management platforms like TenantCloud.
How to Find Roommates Online
If you’ve decided to take your roommate search online for someone to fill a room in your rental, there are tools available. Selecting a tenant can be especially tricky because you own your property and want a living arrangement that works for you and your home.
Online tenant screening can help protect your rental from unwanted tenants. First, list your standards for roommates on an online document that meets the FHA’s code of ethics for landlords. This will be useful if you have a dispute with a poorly behaved tenant.
Second, a rental application can be created that tenants can fill out online. The application will provide information about the tenant’s rental history. TenantCloud offers an intuitive online system that simplifies the process, making it paperless and storing the information online.
Background and credit checks are also important. They let you know whether a potential roommate will be a reliable, trustworthy tenant. You will need their written permission and Social Security number, but it will be worth it in the long run. Also, try to find their previous landlords. Asking for a reference and double-checking it will allow you to converse with people who have experience dealing with them.
Rental Listing Practices to Avoid
Whether you’re a landlord or a tenant, it’s easy to spot dodgy rental listings. They could be missing contact details, photos, or square footage; something that will put renters off. If you’re listing a room to rent in your apartment or house, avoid these rental listing practices.
Incomplete listings are a major reason landlords struggle to find prospective tenants. Missing information and disorganized descriptions will cost you leads, so include as much information about your property as possible.
Poor-quality, blurry photos that don’t showcase complete views of the room you want to rent out and communal areas are also deal-breakers. Capturing images in the morning light to make your living space look vibrant from multiple angles will help your listing’s performance in the real estate market. You could even hire a professional photographer for high-quality photos.
Landlords often mistakenly overprice their rental. Overpricing is common in high-demand areas but usually backfires on them by out-pricing potential tenants. Setting an average rent or slightly below average will be more likely to attract roommates looking for housing.
Compatibility is Key
Whether renting out a room in your home or moving into someone else’s room, the personalities of the people you live with will make or break the experience. If you’re a quiet introvert, living with loud party animals who constantly invite friends over can quickly turn your living arrangement into a nightmare. Likewise, if you enjoy going out and socializing all the time, a non-existent roommate is far from ideal.
There are several ways to prevent renting with roommates from going wrong. We mentioned above that apps and websites like Roomie Match and Diggz treat your roommate search like online dating with matching algorithms. The more detail you give them, the more likely you will find a compatible roommate who will become a genuine friend.
Checking their social media profiles can offer a valuable glimpse into their habits and lifestyle, but it won’t substitute for speaking to them. Consider a video call to have an introductory chat.
You could also meet up with people you’re considering living with and going for a coffee. Ask them questions about their renting history and lifestyle to understand what living with them would be like.
These questions should include asking them about their employment status and ability to cover all the necessary move-in fees, like security deposits. Their answer should give you a sense of whether they will be reliable. If pets are allowed on your property, ask them if they have one or enjoy living with animals.
Asking about their daily schedule will give you a good idea of the flow of living together. You don’t need a strict hour-by-hour account, but it will be useful. Also, consider asking for their opinion on overnight guests and how often they have friends and significant others around. The constant presence of roommates’ partners can be off-putting to some, but they might become a new friend for you.
Cleanliness often causes arguments between roommates. Asking them, “How clean do you like to keep your home?” will reveal their cleaning rituals (or lack thereof) and pet peeves. It’s also worth asking them about drinking. If you enjoy going to bars, a roommate can be the perfect person to go with, but a heavy-drinking roommate may cause problems for teetotalers.
Looking for Roommates as a Married Couple
Married couples increasingly seek roommates to earn rent money to cover mortgage payments and bills. The current socioeconomic climate has made this practice surprisingly common, and not just because they desire extra income.
Saving money is a major reason married couples rent out a room. For example, if you’re a married couple in your 30s working office jobs, try searching online for a similarly aged young professional. It could turn out to be a win-win. You make extra income to cover the high cost of living while your tenant gets a room in a home that feels lived in.
What Is the Best Website to Find a Roommate Who Is Also Looking to Rent?
There are dozens of websites that can help you find the perfect roommate, including:
Facebook groups are easy to join via the website or app. Many towns and cities have housing pages and groups full of people looking for tenants and roommates to live with on short notice.
Craigslist allows you to post room listings, receive reply messages, or reply to existing listings. It’s easy and free but beware of scam listings.
Roomates.com is a website and app that charges $20 a month to access a large number of potential roommates. Its paywall makes it less likely to be fraudulent than free alternatives.
SpareRoom employees review every post before it goes live, ensuring that the ads you respond to are genuine.
Rainbow Roommates is a website-only platform that helps roommates find LGBTQ+ and allies in New York. It has a refundable 15- or 30-day signup fee, pre-screened applicants, and typically takes two weeks to match you with a roommate.
Discover More About Renting
If you’re a landlord or prospective tenant who wants to learn more about property trends, pet screening, rent control, and more, check out our blog. We also have podcasts, webinars, and legal guides to ensure you’re up-to-date with property management and renting wherever you are in America.
If you’re looking for a digital platform to help you rent or lease a room to a tenant, try TenantCloud. It simplifies the roommate experience, making it easy to communicate with roommates to pay rent, sign lease agreements, and contact their landlords.
