Roommates
Finding a great roommate can be a crucial part in your quality of life. A bad roommate can make living downright miserable. A roommate that you can't trust can add unwanted stress to your life. Finding a trustworthy, fun roommate is much easier than in the old days where you had to put an ad in the newspaper or hang a flyer on a bulletin board with your phone number on 15 tabs of paper. There are many websites that can assist you in finding exactly what you are looking for.
It's every renter's nightmare. You walk into your apartment and get a whiff of a strange smell. It's hard to identify, but it's bad. You follow your nose, and unexpectedly, it does not lead you to the kitchen garbage. Instead, your nose takes you straight to your new roommate's room. Uh oh. You've got a problem. Cleaning out a smelly refrigerator or recycling bin is an unpleasant but manageable task. Talking to your roommate about how bad he smells is another thing altogether. We spoke to renters about how they handled their smelly roommates--read on for their stories and the lessons they learned.
At first glance, living with a friend can seem like a safe choice. You care about one another, enjoy each other's company and share similar tastes. What could go wrong? Plenty. Many friendships don't survive the transition to roommate-hood. The very factors that drew you together may push you apart when you share a roof. Marisa remembers what made her want to live with her friend Rebecca during their senior year in college. "Rebecca had the kind of energy that drew people to her; everyone wanted to be around her, including me. I figured that our senior year apartment would be a really fun place to be." The apartment was fun--maybe a little too much fun. "We had crazy parties that Becca organized. She always had the energy to plan the party, but never to clean up. She didn't seem to mind if the apartment was always a terrible mess. Or maybe she didn't know it because I was always cleaning it." By the end of their senior year, Marisa came to feel that she was being taken advantage of. "It really spoiled the friendship. I talk to her once in a while on IM, but it's really not the same."
"After college, I got an apartment with an old friend from high school," says Brooke, a 25-year-old media relations assistant living in Washington, D.C. "We were both single and loved going out. It seemed like the perfect living situation until my roommate started dating a guy from her grad program. All of the sudden, I had a third roommate. He hung around the apartment while she was in class, eating my food and hogging the bathroom. I didn't even like the guy."
If you like animals but aren't ready for the responsibility of owning your own pet yet, having a pet owner for a roommate can seem like a great deal. You benefit from many of the perks of having a pet with a fraction of the responsibility. Of course, things don't always go smoothly. Your stuff is just as vulnerable as your roommate's is to cat scratches and stains from dog urine. If your roommate's hamster escapes its cage, it becomes your problem as well. When you agree to live with someone who has a pet, it's best to figure out where to draw the line of responsibility before things go wrong.
Dirty dishes, late-night noise, unwanted guests: These roommate conflicts pale in comparison to disputes over paying rent. When you first move in to a new apartment, or if new roommates join you in your current place, you'll have to work out the best way to split the rent among all the tenants. Resolving this issue amicably and openly sets the stage for good roommate relations in the future. Unfortunately, there is no blueprint for how rent should be split. The lease given to you by your landlord will usually indicate the total amount of rent due each month but will not provide guidance on how to split the rent. Here are some typical ways tenants divide rent and some other factors to consider.
When you get that email message from your boss telling you that you'll be traveling out of town for several weeks or more, one of the first things you need to think about is your apartment. Your rent is probably your most significant expense. You won't want to continue to empty your bank account for your landlord if you don't have to. Instead, you can find someone to sublease your apartment while you're away. Here are some tips to finding the perfect sublettor for your apartment.
Living with another person is never easy, but with rents increasing in many cities, it may be a necessity. Whether your roommate is an old friend or a stranger you met off of Craigslist, it can be hard to avoid conflict. Anticipating problems before they erupt can help keep your home life harmonious. Here are some of the top roommate disputes and how to handle them.
So you’ve got a new job in a different town, or maybe you’re moving in with your significant other. Perhaps a flight of fancy has gripped you and you’ve decided to embark on a whirlwind journey across the world. Regardless of the reason, you need to move out of your apartment, and you want to find someone to sublet your apartment for the remainder of your lease term, or for as long as you’ll be away from the apartment. What do you need to know and do in this situation? The following tips will help you create a successful sublease experience.
As a youngster, you never understood why you had to do chores—couldn’t dishes and things just take care of themselves? Some people never grow out of this stage, and have difficulty cleaning up after themselves. Others never learn to respect boundaries or really listen to what people are telling them. If you’re in the unfortunate situation of having a roommate who’s dirty, incommunicative, lazy, or who just doesn’t get it, here are some strategies for resolving major issues. First, let’s lay down the ground rules for dealing with difficult roommates.
You’ve finally found the perfect apartment—the right amount of light, the right number of bedrooms, the right kind of shower head, and the kitchen you’ve always dreamed of. Now you just need a perfect roommate to complete the apartment experience. Unfortunately, all of your friends have housing already, and you’re either single or not ready to move in with your significant other. What’s to be done? You might have to resort to advertising for a roommate, either online or in print. But with all the roommate horror stories out there, how can you avoid selecting a psycho or a sadist as your roommate? This article contains tips and tricks for finding the perfect roommate, and for not getting in trouble while doing so.
Moldy dishes, dirty clothes, spoiled milk, mildewed shower tiles, bags of garbage (or, worse, garbage scattered all over the apartment), overflowing litter boxes, and a toothpaste-laden sink—living with a messy roommate can be a unique form of odorous, cluttered hell. Regardless of how you found your roommate—through the world wide web or through a friendship of ten years—you’ll probably need to address the issue of apartment cleanliness at some point in your rooming relationships. This article contains tips for dealing with a messy roommate in a constructive way. You might not be able to persuade a persistently untidy individual to help keep your apartment absolutely pristine, but you should be able to make your situation much more tolerable.
Your rent is steep and you want to alleviate the financial burden by letting someone sleep in the guest room or a corner of the living room. One of your roomies suddenly bailed or moved on to an exciting job opportunity in another state. Your or your roommate’s significant other is moving in (a big step!). Whatever the reason, you’re taking another big step—adding a roommate to the lease. What factors should you consider when doing so? How much might your landlord raise the rent? This article gives a brief overview of the options available when adding a roommate to the lease.
You think you have a bad roommate? My best gal pal lived with, what I consider, one of the worst roommates I have heard about. Within three months there were older men hanging around the apartment, her roommate was lying about the bills and stealing money right in front of my friend’s face.
