Roommate filter: help me find a roommate

February 23, 2008 3:31 PM

What are some good roommate matching services?

I need to find a roommate to move in in August because my landlord wants me to re-sign now and my current roommate is leaving. I've heard good things about roommates.com, but it only allows you to advertise rooms available in the next 120 days. This is an annoying situation, but seems to by typical for living in a college town. Roommate Nation looks kinda sketchy, but I could be wrong.

If it makes any difference, I live in Iowa City; I'm a late 20s male professional and I'm looking for someone similar. It doesn't matter if they're male or female. A student would be OK, but not ideal.

posted by Cogito to Human Relations (4 answers total)

Seriously, it's 120 days for a reason. Nobody, but nobody, makes roommate plans that far in advance. Unless it is students doing a houseshare, and they'd be barely over the three month advance planning mark anyway.

I know you want absolute certainty about what your life is going to be like six months from now, but roommate situations just don't roll that way.

I mean, I guess you could try Craigslist, but really, honestly and truly, your best bet is to wait until the summer and post on roommates.com.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:31 PM on February 23, 2008

I've used roommates.com before and it worked well for me; I was able to find a great place to live with compatible roommates very quickly. I'd suggest re-signing your current lease, and then posting for a roommate on roommates.com 120 days before the room is available. It's three months, and most people looking for a place on that site seem to be doing it with a need to move on incredibly short notice. If you were to have any problems with this, I would guess it would be with finding someone who doesn't need to move in immediately. I doubt you'll have trouble finding a roommate, especially because you live in a college town. If you don't mind having a college roommate, you could also post notices at the college on their public noticeboards (some schools want these notices approved by the student offices before posting, but even if you don't get them approved, the worse that could happen is that the signs would get torn down after awhile if anyone noticed that they lacked an official stamp of approval).

Even if you could find a roommate right now, a lot can happen in six months and you run the risk of him/her reneging on you (more so than if you find a roommate closer to the actual move-in date, when someone needs to move NOW).
posted by Polychrome at 7:04 PM on February 23, 2008

Seconding Polychrome - you're going to have a hard time finding somebody this early in the game, and the professionals that you seek aren't going to be looking for housing six months in advance. Wait a couple of months, and then find somebody in the summer. There'll be plenty of people looking then.

And I know you'd rather have a professional, but honestly, don't rule out students. I'm a PhD student myself, and having lived with both professionals and grad students, I'd take the grad students. Myself and my fellow toilers in academia have a steady (if not good) income as TA/RAs, and we're far too busy working on our theses to be in the way as roommates.

And yeah, the whole "early signing" thing does suck, but it's pretty typical around here at least (I am also in the Iowa City/Coralville area). I'm renting half a duplex owned by a property management company that asked us to sign a lease for 2008-2009... back in November. It's crazy, but for rental housing around here, it's completely a seller's market.
posted by captainawesome at 8:58 PM on February 23, 2008

I don't think I'd recommend roommates.com any more. It worked great for me in the past, but then it got overrun with spammers, i.e. "international" people. Just a heads-up there.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:27 PM on February 23, 2008