As mentioned in How Much Rent Can I Afford? Many renters lower their monthly expenses and afford apartments by renting with a roommate or a group of roommates. If you’re considering renting with others, continue reading to learn more about how to set up expectations and successfully cohabitate your space.
How to find a roommate
There are many places someone can look to find a potential roommate. Commonly, roommate groups form among friends, loose acquaintances, and mutual friends. However, many roommates also find each other from housing groups online. Sites like Facebook have many New York City housing groups and even groups broken down by specific neighborhoods. Some groups may have posts from landlords and agents looking to rent out entire apartments, but most posts come from people looking for a roommate to sign or take over a lease.
If you want to look for roommates, you can ask people ou know in the area and post on social media accounts. In the busy summer season, you may get lucky and have a friend with a friend looking for a place. If that doesn’t work, you can start posting in online groups and forums. Recent college graduates or new hires for a large company may already be a part of some online groups or have access to other housing resources. There may be opportunities in those groups for networking with those in your area, and they may be able to find others looking to move to New York City.
Renters over the age of 50 can follow these tips to find a roommate!
Other co-living situations
It may be difficult for someone to find a roommate you want to live with. In this case, some management companies rent out apartments by the room, helping single renters who cannot afford to rent an entire unit
You can look through RentHop’s roommate finder page to find individual room listings. Often, you can speak more with the agent you connect with to learn about other availabilities in the area.
Some companies organize roommates for renters, so they do not have to worry about organizing an entire apartment. If you choose to live in this type of co-living situation, you are only responsible for paying your rent and do not have to engage with the other roommates.
Sign a roommate agreement
Once you sign the lease, you should also consider signing a roommate agreement. A roommate agreement is a written contract between all roommates in an apartment that outlines agreed-upon rules regarding items like quiet hours, overnight policies, and how to pay rent and other bills.
There are plenty of free roommate agreement templates online, and you can modify them to make them as personal to your living situation as needed. Make sure to find a roommate contract that also covers potential disagreements and outlines steps to solve conflicts when they arise.
Potential challenges of living with roommates
Living with roommates is not always easy. However, some people may not consider the specific challenges they will encounter when living with others. When finding roommates to live with, you may initially overlook your differences to ensure you find a home. However, fundamental differences in how you live your lives could have a huge impact on everyone’s quality of life. Consider the following if you plan to share an apartment with roommates:
- What is my desired level of cleanliness? Do I care if someone I live with does not abide by my level of cleanliness?
- Am I a morning or evening person, and will I feel disrupted if someone is active during the times I’m asleep?
- Am I comfortable with my roommates having guest over? What is the policy for notifying roommates of my guests?
- Do I, or my roommates, have pets or plan on acquiring one through the duration of the lease? Make sure to consider potential allergies in this situation.
- How much am I willing to share and split with others, and how do all roommates designate their personal belongings in common areas?
- Does everyone prefer our apartment to be hot or cold? You may not have much control over the specific temperature in older buildings, but this is still an important factor to consider.
- Does anyone have allergies or illnesses that others must consider when bringing items into the apartment?
- How often do different chores need to happen, and who will do those?
While roommates should heavily consider the above factors when deciding who to live with, some additional considerations include:
- Which way do they place the toilet paper?
- Do they have a history of sleep-walking?
- Are there passionate sports fans who root for different teams?
- What scent of hand soap does everyone prefer?
The above questions may seem trivial, but you may quickly grow annoyed by preferences and instead wish to live with those more aligned to your daily habits. Over time, compounding differences could make or break a roommate situation.
Knowing your answers to the above questions will help you make the proper decision about the people you want to live with. While you do not need to agree with your roommates on every single situation, you should be aware of your differences going into your living situation to understand what may create problems down the road. When you are aware of potential disagreements ahead of time, you can plan how to resolve them and avoid heightened conflict.
