3 Tips for finding the right Room Mate

Are you looking for a room mate?

Here are my top 3 tips for finding the right room mate!

Tip One: Take Your Time

It is super important to take your time, you don’t want to rush into finding a roommate and get stuck living with someone that is impossible to live with. You need to really think about what is important to you with someone you’ve got to live with, coming up with boundaries, financial situations and anything you need from them.

Another reason you may need to take your time in the interview process, you need to be able to interview more than one person and find different characteristics to find out exactly what you want or how you want to live if the right person doesn’t come immediately don’t settle for less than what you want.

If you don’t already have a place to live, you also need to take your time finding the right place for the money you would like to pay, you don’t want to end up paying a fortune for a house that you will not be happy in, be research a bit first for example you could look at Calgary Homes for Sale,  perhaps think about whether you want everyone to have their own private areas, do you need your own bathrooms? are there enough bedrooms? Is it too expensive and may cause conflict on the price? These are all things you need to consider and lastly, you need to take your time with advertising, making the right advert is so so important you don’t just want to write ‘looking for a roommate’ as there’s no telling who will come forward, people want to know every last detail really if they’re looking into moving in with someone they perhaps do not really know. Going into peoples homes to interview them is quite an important detail because you kind of get an outlook of how they live for example if there are loads of dishes in the sink are they possible lazy whereas you need everything to be clean?

Tip Two : Consider Finances

As you know when moving finances is such an important point, following on from the points I’ve made before when looking for a house or apartment take into consideration whether someone else will be able to afford their part, some peoples jobs do not pay as good as others. Another thing you may have to consider is that the lease will eventually come to an end, are you buying all the furniture or are you splitting it with people? If they have to move out early are you going to be arguing over who has what in the apartment? Are you going to be sharing food from the grocery shop and splitting the shop price in half or are you buying your own items separately? These are all things you need to consider because financially it’s important to be able to afford everything and come up with boundaries. You should be asking things such as is there anything that could change with their financial situation such as a new job, becoming redundant, how long have they had the job for and are they financially secure within their job? Are they in any debt? Have they ever struggled to pay rent before? This brings me on to the next tip…

Tip Three: Ask Questions

Ask questions, ask so many questions, you don’t want to have a roommate that you barely know, you need to try and get to know them and get answers to questions that will give you an idea of what they are like to live with. try to ask questions that are not too intrusive but maybe start off with asking, what do you expect from a roommate, do you have any hobby’s (are they loud hobbies that may annoy anyone) do they like listening to loud music, what does their day typically look like. Are they always at home? Or always at work? Are they clean or do they find the time to clean no matter what their work schedule or would they leave it for someone else to clean up? This one is really important as if you’re clean and they expect someone else to clear up their mess it can come quite heated very quickly, you need to have the same outlook on housework etc. A question I’ve mentioned before which is probably one of the most important as you need to make sure the rent is paid every month, is there anything that could impact your financial situation in the next year? A few more questions I would ask is have you had a roommate before? Do you smoke? Do you drink a lot? Do you want friends over often? Do you have any pets? Really get a feel for the person to see if they fit your criteria on what you’re looking for and whether you think you’d get along with them, the last thing you want is to rush into something and end up living with an absolute nightmare!

It’s always important to be upfront with them and explain what it is you exactly want from a roommate, don’t rush into anything too quickly you really need all the information you can get when choosing the right roommate so my top three tips for finding the roommate is 1.  Take your time 2. Consider finances, you need someone who can pay for their half of things and not offload it onto someone else and 3 Ask questions.