You’re thinking of ways to save money on rent and thought about renting a room in someone’s house.  I’ll break it down for you today by looking at the most important things to know:

• How to find a room for rent
• Vetting your options
• Pitfalls to avoid

How to find a room for rent

You would think it would be as easy as pulling up your google search and typing in “rooms to rent near me” or just room rental. But renting a room is the wild, wild west of real estate.  Lots of fake sites, scammers, or people who want to charge you money for information that is free. 

Here’s what you do:

1. When you search for “room rentals” on google, go down to the business section and look for businesses who run the house.  This way you get someone reputable that isn’t just stuffing people in houses to make a quick buck or paid enough money to get ranked.  They are a real business verified and vetted by google.
2. Craigslist is also an option. They have an entire section dedicated to room rentals.  You can narrow it down by zip code even.
3. The most important tip is to know what other words to search for.  Room Rentals are also known as “coliving”, spelled with or without a dash.  Instead of just searching for “room rentals”, also search for “coliving near me” or “coliving communities”.  This is a game changer and will open up your searches to the rest of the market.

What to look for

Now you know where to look, let’s talk about what to look for.  You’ve looked through google, craigslist and even expanded to look for coliving properties. 

1. 1Look at their social media (think facebook and Instagram) for legitimacy.  Is their social media more than a year old?  Are there semi regular posts? 
2. Check out their reviews on google and facebook?  These are key to finding direct feedback from others.  You’re not looking for nothing but 5 star reviews where the business owner got their friends and family to provide input. Instead, you want real customer feedback.
3. Wherever you see an ad, look at the photos. Professional photos tell you a lot about the provider. If they aren’t willing to put the effort in on the front end to stage the place nicely and take good photos, then that lack of attention is also the level of service you can expect from them once you move in.

We’re in the home stretch. You found some places then used the reviews, pictures, and social media to narrow it down.  Before you make your choice, it’s important to know the major pitfalls you want to avoid:

1. Month to month leases – yeah they sound like a good idea because they maximize flexibly. But we found through all of our research that short term people create short term problems.  Better to have a provide with longer term leases that also have a structure for dealing with any challenges or conflicts that arise.
2. Maintenance can make or break your experience with a place.  If they do not have a full time maintenance person, or better yet maintenance team, then expect any problems you have to get addressed days later instead of hours.
3. If you’re only getting rent and utilities for your payment, then you’re going to be surrounded by others who treat the place and ultimately YOU as a transaction.  Seek out places that hosts events and look for way to invest back into you and the house.  If the house is not built with intention to create communitas, or ultimately a sense of shared responsibility, then you will be left with the bad experiences we all dread. 

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