A Roommate Quandry

In My Humble Opinion
1

My lease is due for renewal June the 1st on what is, all in all, a pretty fantastic apartment. It is huge, rent stabilized, cheap and in a great neighborhood in NYC. Really the place is pretty perfect. My roommate and I have been having issues for the last 9 months of living together as I am sure anyone who has read any of my previous posts can tell you. Today we started talking about what to do when the lease renews and she mentioned she wants to move back to Texas, which is fine because it eliminates most of the current drama from my life, but also puts me in a bit of a bind.

I love my apartment and if I really wanted to stay in a spacious 2 bedroom by myself I could afford it. Barely, but I could afford it. I really don’t want to push my finances to that point though because then it is just a short fall from a job loss/medical bill/etc to being unable to pay my bills and being evicted. That also would change my emergency savings from covering just over 3 months of expenses to only covering about 6 weeks worth and leaving me with no extra money to add to my financial cushion. Now this leaves me with 2 options, the first being find a new roommate and the second being find a new apartment.

Finding a new roommate would be difficult since I have been here less than a year now and I don’t really know too many people. I have sent emails to the couple of people I know who might possibly be interested but really finding someone to take her place that I know and trust will be incredibly hard to do. If I find a new apartment my rent will increase a bit since there is no way I will find a one bedroom for what I am paying for my half of things now and then I don’t have anyone to talk to when I get home. I love living with other people and find it lonely to live by myself, so if I move into a one bedroom I will have to cope with that.

Has anyone ever rented an apartment with someone they didn’t know very well before hand? How did that work out? What would you recommend to someone in my position?

2

I’ve mostly roomed with people I didn’t know beforehand, and going from the stories I’ve heard about folks rooming with friends (i.e. they usually don’t end up as friends when it’s over), it’s definitely my preference. (There were never just two of us, tho, I always lived with at least three others, so YMMV.)

If you’re not already your roommate’s friend, it’s easier to establish yourself as his/her ROOMMATE, not friend, which makes it easier to tell them to do their dishes or pay their bills, or that you’re going out tonight with your friends and they’re not invited. (These are difficult things to tell friends, especially if the friend isn’t a very good listener.) If you’re rooming with a stranger you are not obliged to protect your friendship, which makes it much easier to deal with roommate tensions as they arise. There are no pre-existing tensions and there’s nothing at stake if the roommate relationship doesn’t work out.

Look for friends of friends, or grad students (usually more mature than undergrads, but certainly not always), or short-term stay professionals (i.e. people in town on a contract or a training course) to be roommates. Collect deposits for every bill that’s in your name, and make sure your valuables are locked up until you’re sure you can trust them. Clarify your expectations (cleaning, shopping, use of common areas/shared stuff, etc) up front. Only once all that is established, then you can work on becoming friends. I do not recommend doing this in the reverse order.

3

When I subletted a room out of my 3bdrm house back in my young and single days, I had good experiences and bad. The good: a very neat, very conscientious young man who was gay and great fun to go clubbing with. No drugs, no excess drinking, no strange people coming over unexpectedly. He was like living with a sister or best gal pal. I miss him.

Worst experience: Stripper with her construction worker boyfriend. Drugs, drinking and partying; late nights; strangers in my house without notice; loud, LOUD (scary) fights between the couple at all hours of the day or night; late with rent. He was a bully and she was too dependent to leave him. Couldn’t kick them out, so I cancelled my lease and told them it was time to go. Among other destruction, boyfriend nailed a dresser to the wall about halfway up. Real winners. Moral: Watch out for strippers and their overbearing boyfriends.

4

I think that since you can cover the expenses yourself, you should stay and take your sweet, sweet time finding a trustworthy roomie. I have had great and lousy experiences with strangers as roomates, and having read your previous posts it is clear that you’ve learned that knowing someone as a friend doesn’t necessarily mean that you can trust them as a roommate, anyhow. You are in a position of great power and flexibility if you stay- potential roommates need a place to live more than you need their money. This doesn’t mean you can or should jerk people around, but it means that you can go slow, meet with people on neutral ground and discuss terms and priorities before you even let them into your place to look around.

The big perk, to my mind, about living with a stranger is the lack of emotional commitment. If you both go into it looking at it as a business arrangement, far less drama is likely to occur. Of course, you should definitely check references and pass on anyone who skeeves you out, but you have that luxury! Plus, if you find someone who will give you (or the landlord- not sure how you’d be working the lease) first, last and security, you will have a minimum of a month to find somebody else if they flake out at some point in the next year, and you’ll presumably be back in the same situation you are in now, which for a renter is not too shabby.

5

[quote=Has anyone ever rented an apartment with someone they didn’t know very well before hand? How did that work out? What would you recommend to someone in my position?[/quote]

Yes. Badly. I’ll skip the details, because whinyness about what happened when I was young and stupid is not attractive.

But if your apartment is nearly perfect, I’d recommend you work harder to find someone you can live with as a roommate. Back off on the need to already know and trust someone, but find someone you are interested in getting to know better. Or at least, try finding someone that someone you know alrady knows and trusts.

6

Can you put a notice up at work? Perhaps you could speak to your Personnel department - maybe there’s someone joining the company who will need somewhere to live for a month or so while they find somewhere more permanent?

7

I definitely don’t want to just rent out the room on my own or anything, I would want someone to sign the lease with me to give me some sort of legal protection. That way if they didn’t pay I could take them to court or have them evicted or something.

I have learned that living with a friend isn’t always the best situation in the world but I also don’t want to invite people who are basically strangers to live in my home either. I don’t have “doors” on my bedroom (I have these accordion thingys that slide into the wall and could be cut through with a butter knife) so I would not have any way to lock up my valuables and that makes me nervous.

8

[QUOTE=pbbth]
Has anyone ever rented an apartment with someone they didn’t know very well before hand? How did that work out? What would you recommend to someone in my position?
[/QUOTE]

I’m currently rooming with someone in Brooklyn who I only met when I came to look at the apartment. He and I get along fine, and have been living together for over a year.

This might depend on what kind of roommate you want. Friends of mine have had trouble living with people they didn’t know beforehand because of their expecations of the roommate relationship.

I was clear when I moved in, for example, that I like my privacy, and that while I try to be friendly, I wasn’t looking for a friend. As a result, I barely see my roommate (neither of us spend very much time in the apartment), and when we do, we’re cordial, but we aren’t friends and never go out together or anything like that. Friends of mine have had trouble when they expected to mostly keep to themselves, but their roommates expected someone to be social with, or vice versa.

Is it possible that you could find a subletter for a short period? That would give you more time to find a stable roommate.

9

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
I’ve mostly roomed with people I didn’t know beforehand, and going from the stories I’ve heard about folks rooming with friends (i.e. they usually don’t end up as friends when it’s over), it’s definitely my preference. (There were never just two of us, tho, I always lived with at least three others, so YMMV.)

If you’re not already your roommate’s friend, it’s easier to establish yourself as his/her ROOMMATE, not friend, which makes it easier to tell them to do their dishes or pay their bills, or that you’re going out tonight with your friends and they’re not invited. (These are difficult things to tell friends, especially if the friend isn’t a very good listener.) If you’re rooming with a stranger you are not obliged to protect your friendship, which makes it much easier to deal with roommate tensions as they arise. There are no pre-existing tensions and there’s nothing at stake if the roommate relationship doesn’t work out. With friends-of-friends its a little hard to say, you know “I think such and such habit is gross and nasty”

Look for friends of friends, or grad students (usually more mature than undergrads, but certainly not always), or short-term stay professionals (i.e. people in town on a contract or a training course) to be roommates. Collect deposits for every bill that’s in your name, and make sure your valuables are locked up until you’re sure you can trust them. Clarify your expectations (cleaning, shopping, use of common areas/shared stuff, etc) up front. Only once all that is established, then you can work on becoming friends. I do not recommend doing this in the reverse order.
[/QUOTE]
My experiences have been the same, given the choice I would much prefer to live with a hand-picked stranger than a friend-of-a-fried. With strangers you can get all your dealbreakers out front, before they move in. So if you are a dishwashing fanatic who insists that not even a spoon be left in the sink unwashed, well, just tell the person before they move in that this is a house rule. Plenty of people will write you off as a freak but you’ll never talk to them again, and the ones who still want the apartment probably share your compulsions. With friends-of-friends its a little uncomfortable to probe, there seems to be this idea that “oh, we both are friends with Julie so we should be able to get along fine” which is not always the case.

Anyhow, these are the areas that I personally would bring up in roommate interviews: overnight guests, music and TV habits, use of drugs and smoking in the house, cleaning. Keep in mind that it’s not about saying which lifestyle is good and which is bad, it’s just about finding someone who shares your lifestyle, at least within the house. Also don’t forget that in NYC being the person with the room to rent out makes you the one with the upper hand – in other parts of the country I might not suggest just picking someone off of craigslist but in NYC many perfectly sane people go this route.

10

I have had two out of two successful experiences with this, when my age and financial situation were similar to yours. I advertised at a local university which was also where I worked. However, neither of the people I wound up rooming with were students there. (This was in the paleolithic era, before much internet).

I really recommend the “No overnight guests” rule if that is something you can live with yourself. Having that extra boyfriend or relative move in is about the worst case roommate scenario. I recommend against posting the notice to your coworkers, even if it’s allowed. You do not want tag-team home-work drama. My roommate ad laid out all the rules right there, so that people who were looking for a different arrangement tended not to call. Some high-drama folks did call (woman who left Maine after a bad divorce with no job and a parrot, I’m thinkin’ of you …) but were all weeded out successfully over the phone.

If you have real valuables, I suggest a safe-deposit box. If you feel you need to lock the door with a roommate, the situation is not working.

One other rule I felt was worth spelling out up front was that food was not shared.

Good luck!

11

[QUOTE=pbbth]
Has anyone ever rented an apartment with someone they didn’t know very well before hand? How did that work out? What would you recommend to someone in my position?
[/QUOTE]

Personal experience, here. YMMV.

I have had almost universally awful roommate experiences with people I don’t know. Especially in the case of someone being established at a given residence, and inviting someone new into it. I can easily see one or the other roommate arguing about this or that being “my space, not communal,” or disproportionate expectations.

But I’m far less social than you present yourself as being, I prefer going to where I don’t have to deal with people than seeking them out, which may be part of the problem. And, of course, my jerk detector is somewhat broken.

12

[QUOTE=pbbth]
I definitely don’t want to just rent out the room on my own or anything, I would want someone to sign the lease with me to give me some sort of legal protection. That way if they didn’t pay I could take them to court or have them evicted or something…
[/QUOTE]

IANAL, but wouldn’t having them co-sign your lease give you even less control?

13

[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
IANAL, but wouldn’t having them co-sign your lease give you even less control?
[/QUOTE]

AIUI, in NYS at least, the simple act of knowing residence gives rights, and protections, to the person residing at a residence. That is, unless one can argue that the resident was there through some kind of false pretenses (fraudulent ‘vacation’ stay, breaking and entering without the legal leaseholder’s knowledge, etc..)

If there’s no agreement about rent or such, it can be hard to prove a requirement for the resident to provide that as a condition of residence. e.g. “He said I could live there, rent free, when we were first secret lovers. After we broke up he started demanding all this crap from me he said I’d never have to pay.”

By making the lease jointly signed, I do think that pbbth will have more options in the face of a deadbeat roommate.

(Not that I think they’d be good options, just less bad.)

14

Hmmm, all good ideas and points for sure. I guess I will start searching around on Craigslist and put the word out to see if there are any dependable people looking for an affordable place to stay in my neighborhood.

15

if you went to college, maybe you could post on the college site or alumni mailing list or something?

I had a baaaaaad experience living with friends, and also some guy from CL. Basically, the CL guy became incredibly vindictive over a misunderstanding, and my friend basically let the guy from CL kick me out b/c he didn’t “want to be involved”. Gee, thanks.

The best roommate I had was someone I never talked to. my advice is not to try to be friends with someone, just be cordial and detached and have other friends besides roommates.

16

Put up a post on Craigslist about the apartment and be very detailed in what type of person you would feel comfortable living with. Don’t just give the apartment specs, give a bit of info of what you want the apartment life to be like. Should the person work 9-5, or nights, or does that even matter. Smokers/non-smokers, what’s your idea of cleanliness, what about overnight guests? Do you want someone who likes to spend the weekend going to barhopping or someone who spends time at home/going to the theater/a student, etc. Male/female? If the place is as great as you say you’ll get many replies and no matter what you want there will be someone who will fit it. I found my current apartment on Craigslist and I’ve had no problems with roommates at all. I knew none of the people I’m currently living with beforehand, and we get along fine. My first apartment was through a broker and I got it with someone I had only met once previous. We also had no problems.
Good luck!

17

I’ve lived with strangers before - in grad school. The ad was placed on our school website, so there was some kind of implicit trust that a student from the same school would meet the minimum requirement of decency, I suppose. We had some mild trouble because one of the guys we lived with kept piling his dirty dishes in the sink, but after a few post-its the problem resolved itself pretty quickly. All of us were cordial to each other, but none of us ever became friends, and that was fine. The boundaries were clear and we all stuck to them and that prevented a lot of problems from happening.

18

I’ve lived with both friends and strangers, and I must say in many cases strangers are easier to live with. The type of drama you are experiencing with your roommate right now would probably never happen with a stranger. Of course, there are some freaks out there, but I’ve had almost 30 roommates (I move around a lot) and I’ve never had one that was a complete nightmare.

I’m actually currently looking for a place myself (too bad I’m not in NYC, hey?), and I can tell you, wording your ad well will help you get the kind of people you want and not waste time with those you don’t want. Be specific - put the price up prominently, state whether utilities are extra and how much they are, is there laundry on site? Do you want a male or female or is either fine? Smokers? Pets? Students or working people or either?

Bad Ad: Room for rent - available May. Near subway station.

Good Ad: One large room for rent in spacious two bedroom apartment in Your Neighbourhood. $$$ a month, including heat, water, and electric, plus 1/2 of cable/phone/internet. Looking for a non-smoking female, preferably a mature student or working professional. Available May 1st with one year lease.

This type of ad can help you get the person you want and also avoid an inbox full of “How much are utilities?” and “When is it available?” type questions. I find when you meet the person for a tour you can get a pretty quick impression of whether you will be okay with them or not.

19

http://www.easyroommate.com/

20

It’s worth noting that in NYC, you can get away with having a ridiculously specific roommate description in your Craigslist ad.

There was actually a whole thread a few months ago (in the Pit, I believe, but I can’t search now) wherein a poster was complaining about the ludicrous requirements people were holding their subletters to. It’s entirely normal to see ads that specify how much time you can spend in the apartment, your expected level of involvement with your roommate, whether or not you may ever have guests (overnight or otherwise), types of food that may be brought into the apartment, even what type of job you must have (and not just how well it pays - ads that specify jobs in the arts are not uncommon).

Of course, in NYC you can get away with that because space is at such a premium. You don’t have to take on anyone as a roommate who you aren’t 100% satisfied with. It’s irritating as hell when you’re trying to find a place to live, but if you’re the one looking for a subletter/roommate I imagine it’s pretty nice.