Getting along with Roommates

August 21st, 2008 by Matt DiChiara| Posted in Apartment Guide, Roommates | No Comments »

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This notable quote is an apt description of life with roommates. Of course it can be great to live in a situation with others and share your experiences, but it is also important to have a comfortable personal space.

Since everyone has different needs and expectations, when you live with roommates a good way to be respectful is to be able to foresee potential problems and be prepared to work together on solutions.

In our series of articles on roommates, we will offer tips on finding roommates, identifying potential issues, providing some insights on how to mediate roommate disputes and offer some ideas on how to avoid those disagreements.

Living with roommates can be great fun, but like everything, there are things that come up that can drive you absolutely insane. When the cause of such frustration is someone you live with, no one wins.

The benefits of living with roommates, though can totally outweigh problems. Not only does having a roommate usually allow you to find an apartment for rent that has more space, but it is a great way to cut costs. The rent for a 2 bedroom apartment divided by two is usually cheaper than a 1 bedroom apartment, and usually is provides a larger common area. This trend generally continues with an increase in the number of roommates in an apartment.

Because so many people are looking to take advantage of the economic and social aspects of living with roommates, we have integrated a roommate finder into our apartment search. When you search for a city, you will notice that on the top of our page there is a roommates tab. If you click on it, you will be brought to a page that displays profiles of people looking for roommates. You can search and browse on a number of criteria to look for potential roommates.

We think this new functionality is great for renters because it expands your options. Instead of looking for a 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom you can look for an apartment with any number of roommates. So if your dream apartment complex only has 2 or 3 bedroom apartments available, you can jump on the roommate finder and explore some other options. Or, say that 1 bedroom apartment is stretching your rental budget, but if you could share costs, you could pull it off, then you can search for roommates to help out.