What is this forum?
A 100% free forum to find a roommate: traditional roommates, co-housing & co-living
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What is this forum NOT?
It’s not an extremely structured experience. It’s a “free for all” way to find a roommate. “Free for all” as in free, no charge. Also, free for all as in, that’s what it is.
You can place roommate posts, find other interested roommates, all for free, but your post will only be as good as YOU make it. To successfully find a roommate here will require a bit of thought, some actual typing, and minimal ability to read and follow instructions.
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Why “roommate?”
In the US, it means adults who want to live with other adults to achieve a variety of lifestyle improvements: social, financial, security, etc.
In Europe, “housemate” or “flatmate” might be more common, but they’re synonyms.
Few adults outside of college dorms choose to share bedrooms with other adults with whom they’re not intimately involved. Most roommate, co-housing and co-living situations involve collectively sharing at least rooms, sometimes even buildings plural.
If you’d like to be extremely literal, it should probably be roomSmates. But since no one we know actually says that, it’d mostly look like a typo.
Confusingly, some use the terms co-housing and co-living interchangeably as well. However, since we believe there are meaningful distinctions to be made between those categories, we’re going to make them.
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What are the differences between traditional roommates, co-housing, and co-living?
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How do I find a roommate here?
- sign up
- log in
- decide which interests you: traditional roommates, co-housing or co-living
- place a post in the corresponding category, including requested information
- wait for approval***
- reply to other forum members who interest you
- get notifications or visit periodically to see who appeared in the meantime
***(While we regret that the brief delay may be frustrating for some, a tiny bit of human review is actually necessary to shield the sincere from a barrage of dirty rotten spammers.)
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How does anyone get in touch with me?
We’d recommend using the forum options instead of placing your personal contact info directly in your post, to keep it away from search engines and spambots. However, we’d also recommend those advertising co-housing or co-living include their collective’s URL (when it has one, of course).
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What posts will NOT be approved?
In addition to any other post that’s not on topic, we will nix anything seemingly sexual or romantic in nature. This forum is not for dating or sex. It’s for roommates.
By our definition, “roommate” does not equal sexual/romantic partner, long or short-term. We don’t mean “roommate” in a cheesy adult movie way, we mean it in a still friendly but business-oriented financial arrangement way.
Despite whatever open-mindedness you may feel in general, if you’re thinking “roommate” is a euphemism for something you’re hoping will be more than “just friends” at the outset, you need to go elsewhere.
Anyone too dense to grasp that will be deleted, unceremoniously. (That means we won’t spend time re-explaining not being a total jackass all over again just for you personally, because life is short.)
Also, if you sound otherwise insincere, ill-intentioned, or just WAY too insane? NO to that noise too.
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What about profanity?
While we ain’t yer momma, you should know that excessive profanity will never be clever in a roommate post.
It makes a bad first impression on many, and if you make a bad first impression, your response rate and ultimate ability to find roommates will suffer accordingly.
We do think profanity has its limited place, usually in expressing oneself in extreme situations or sexual situations. However, if you think your roommate post should constitute one of those, it’s almost certain we’ll reject it.
We won’t delete for a little . . . but if your post is so chock full of curses it sounds absurd, we’ll kick it to the curb.
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For those looking for a more directed roommate search experience with an in-depth questionnaire covering all manner of relevant questions to ask when looking for a roommate, we can also recommend:
RoomieMatch Roommates - Find a roommate without SCAMS, SPAMS, or SCUMS - we take out the trash for you. Exclusively human-moderated roommate service. Free roommate search and cheap roommate search options, detailed roommate matching profiles. US, Canada, and Australia.