So my roommate is moving out to live with her boyfriend. Now I’m faced with the prospect of finding a roommate that will be cool with my cat and the fact that I smoke. On the plus side for them, I travel for biz so I’m only home for a week per month.
Well I also figured I’d ask dopers first both for a potential roommate, and also for help trying to craft an ad for the print papers in my area. I’m not quite sure how much info to put into the ad, and how much to say. Here I’m going to lay it all on the line.
Apartment:
$450 per month plus gas and electric
1 bedroom
1 bath
dining room
large living room
1000 square feet
off street parking
hardwood floors
cable modem
private laundry
Advantages:
for 3 weeks of the month you get the run of the place as I’m away traveling for biz
in house computer geek for tech support
I’ll move my stuff into the dining room so that you can have the bedroom
Potential Disadvantages:
I smoke.
You would need to take care of my cat while I’m gone.
Well, I’m assuming this is going in the classifides, and you’re paying by the line, so this is how I’d make it short… oh, is it one bedroom total. I didn’t pick that up the first time around. So this person would stay in the bedroom, and you would live in the dining room when you were there?
1 to share apartment w/ traveling businesspersonwho is only in 1 week/month. 1000 sq ft, hardwood floors, offstreet parking, laundry, cable modem. Must like cats. $450.
That should be good for an ad. You can mention the smoking thing and the fact that you’ll be living in the dining room when you talk with people in person/on the phone.
Good luck! I’d take you up on the offer if it didn’t mean a 6 hour commute!
I mostly agree with Eonwe, except I’d add the fact that you smoke to the ad. To me, that’s about the most important fact after the rent. I would feel pretty cheesed off if this sounded perfect to me, and I finally got hold of you after trying for a couple of days, only to find out that you smoke and there is no way I could live there. Not to make any comments on smoking; I just don’t smoke, and wouldn’t live with a smoker (well, I did until I was 18, but never again.)
Another option is EasyRoommate. It’s a roommate matching/search service. The nice thing about that is you can tell a bit about yourself and specify what you are looking for in a roommate, and tell a bit about the apartment. It’s free to place an ad, but to get contact info for people looking for rooms costs money–$50 when I placed my ad. It does have the advantage of being able to include a lot more info, and being able to search for people who need a room instead of just waiting for people to respond to your ad.
I would also add your gender and the gender of the person you are seeking - while it doesn’t matter to all people (my roomie is a girl and I’m a guy), some people are really strict with this type of thing. But in my search a year ago, I ran into a lot of people who were only looking for roommates of the same gender.
As for online stuff, I’d suggest www.roommateservice.com before Easy Roommate. I had ads on both and actually found my current place on the former. It’s a pretty decent service and you get a wide variety of people to choose from. Also on these places, people have to write up profiles so you can read a bit about the possible roommate before you decide to even meet them. Helps avoid a potentially uncomfortable situation.
Anyhow, you might want to be careful about the situation. I had a roommate (brother of another roommate, long story) that completely screwed me over for hundreds of dollars by never paying any bills and moving out while I was at work.
It will probably work out just fine, but proceed with caution.
Or you can use a local college housing board. They have forms. On the forms it specifies all that info
& smoking too, at least it does for our college.
Thanks for helping out with suggestions. I am the roommate that is moving out to live with her boyfriend. Funny how things work out. Slowhand53 is a guy, and I am a girl - so I know it doesn’t matter at all to him what gender the new roommate would be. I’ll describe more later what it is like to live with him…he’s a really great guy and if I wasn’t moving in with my boyfriend I would have stayed living with him for a long time. Besides - he’s never home so you do practically get the entire place to yourself!
