Julie King is thankful to have roommates she likes and trusts. She shares an Orlando house with her sister and a male “friend of a friend.” The two pay $260 a month each, while King pays $299. “I have the master bedroom, so I pay a little more.”
King’s previous roommate had a cat she didn’t like, friends she liked even less and a lifestyle markedly different from hers.
“We roomed together for a year and a half,” said King, a 26-year-old insurance underwriter. “He was nice, but he was a party person and I’m not. It seemed like every morning I’d get up at 6 and there would be a different friend of his sleeping on the couch.”
As much as King likes her current situation, she knows it can’t last. She already worries about having to go through the roommate search again.
“It’s tough. It’s not like you’re picking a friend; you’re picking someone to live with.”
The ordeal of picking someone to live with for the purpose of sharing living expenses is a common one. College students, young adults starting careers, divorced people with mortgages they no longer can afford, elderly widows on fixed incomes–they all know how daunting the search for a suitable roommate can be.
Then again, the reward can be great. By sharing expenses, people can live in a bigger, nicer place than they would on their own.
Jo Ann Cravens, 45, is actively searching for a roommate to live in the Orlando home that has been hers since a divorce seven years ago.
“It’s a borderline situation,” she said. “I could live here by myself, but I could never go anywhere. I’d be eating a lot of hot dogs and beans.”
But Cravens, a financial administrator with Orange County government, knows she must be careful in her selection process. She said one of her previous roommates stole a blank check from her, forged her signature and cashed it for $500. He added insult to injury by paying for his room that same month with a bad check.
Another roommate stole one of Cravens’ gas cards and used it for months without her knowledge. “I didn’t find out about it until he was arrested.”
A third, she said, left suddenly and unannounced after two months–taking all of her jewelry with him.
Older and much wiser, Cravens now does her best to thoroughly check out would-be roommates.
“I check their references, including where they lived and worked before. I also check with the sheriff’s department. One guy who came to my house (for an interview) had been arrested for breaking and entering. He didn’t tell me that.”
Cravens screens potential roommates by telephone. For initial face-to-face interviews, she makes sure she has a male friend in the house.
Paula Borges, who owns a house in Orlando and also needs roommates to help pay the mortgage, said she has her initial meetings away from her home. “If it doesn’t work out, you don’t want them to know where you live.”
Borges, who is 36 and works in a billing department for a hauling and grading contractor, also believes in thoroughly checking into the background of anyone who is going to live under her roof. In addition to checking police records, she has a friend in the real estate business who runs credit checks for her.
Borges also has a list of questions for all prospective roommates that makes it clear what she expects. No drugs, no cigarettes, no heavy drinking, no more than two overnight guests per week, and so on.
Even then there are no guarantees, Borges said. “You usually know within 60 to 90 days if it’s going to work.”
King, Cravens and Borges have searched for roommates a number of ways, including asking around among friends and co-workers, posting notices in apartment house laundry rooms, placing ads in newspaper classified sections, and paying for roommate-matching services. They agreed that classified ads generated the most calls, although not always the kind of calls they were looking for.
“There are a lot of weirdos who call,” Cravens said. She estimated that fewer than half the people who respond to classifieds get beyond the initial phone call.
Roommate-matching services made screening easier but did not always produce many–and in some cases any–prospects.
David Davis, general manager of Apartment Hunters of Orlando, which offers a $30 roommate-matching service, said the main reason people looking for roommates don’t get calls is that they ask for too much rent. For most people, “the point of a roommate is not to have a nice place but a place,” Davis said. In other words, reasonable monthly rent takes precedence over all else.
CHECKING OUT THE APPLICANTS
During the interview, you’ll need to get full names, current addresses, places of employment, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. With that in hand:
– Call places of employment to verify if, and how long, they have worked there.
– Call current landlords to verify their addresses and to find out if they have been responsible tenants.
– Call other personal references that have been furnished: former roommates, friends or relatives.
– You can check criminal records with a visit to the records department of your local county sheriff’s office.
– Knight-Ridder/Tribune
