So you need a roommate or a new room to rent. You’ve scoured the search engines dry using terms like “roommate” and “apartment” and anything you could think of as your keywords. But let me guess. The results were overwhelming with promises and none of the advertising companies actually followed through.
Are you sick of wasting time with websites like Rooomates.com or Roommatematch.com or any other similar service who swears there is no fee, but once you have spent a good 15 minutes filling out all their forms for your “Free membership” it is then you realize you’ve been tricked. Most of these services say they are free but they really mean free to be teased. You may seem hundreds of listings you love completely free of charge, but if you want to do anything about it there is almost always a hefty fee. Are you as sick of this as I finally was? Tired of wasting your time?
I have decided to do some extensive research on roommate searches and as a result have determined that these companies that overwhelm your search engine results (like Roomate.com) might as well be outright scams. Sure you can find a roommate with them but as I’ve found, you can also use other services who are forthright and honest, simple to use and absolutely 100% free. Since I had quite a lot of time on my hands today I have spent the past several hours milking the search engines for all they are worth in order to dig up all the free ways to find a roommate online.
Below, I have listed each one with a rating from 1-5. Note that they are all great, but the rating scale may help you prioritize the order in which you visit them. I went about listing virtually every last one I could find in an effort to accommodate everyone’s needs. For instance, you should find this information useful whether you are casually browsing for roommates as one of your future housing options or you are frantically looking for someone to live with and will exhaust every last resource to do so as long as you can do it within the next 15 days so you don’t end up on the street.
FREE ROOMMATE MATCH UP SERVICES
Roommate Locator 5
http://www.roommatelocator.com
This service is my favorite resource for finding a good roommate match or housing need. It is clear cut, simple and there is no complicated red tape or endless pages of fine print to worry about and deter you from doing what you really visited the site to do: Find a roommate. It cuts right to the chase, which is really nice when you have been scouring the web for hours on this roommate venture only to find that most of the services out there are too expensive to be worth it. I recommend visiting this website first. In probably less than three steps, (steps being clicking on appropriate links), you can draw up a lovely page for each profile you match with, fit with all the information you might need, including the individual’s real personal email address, phone number, and any other information that he or she has decided to disclose.
Apartments USA 5
http://www.apartmentsusa.com/roommates/
This is also a really wonderful site with quick and easy access to all the necessary details and contact information of the room or roommate you are interested in. The website is very simple to use and does not require any filling out of time consuming forms to get the info you need. Search to pull up listings in your state, with the direct email address, phone number and personally unique description of the roommate or room in question clearly defined. The site also appears to be very popular.
Roommate USA 5
Roommate USA is great for all of your roommate searching needs. Unlike most of the match up services out there, they really truly do allow you to search, obtain contact information, and post your own ad and picture free of charge and on top of that, no official registration is required for the first two. I am not sure how else this company makes their money, but for sure, they are not taking yours and mine. Check it out yourself and you will see an easy to use navigation where you can search for like-minded roommates straight from the home page. As the profiles come up, click on the individual user names to get contact info as detailed as email address, phone numbers and even Instant Messenger names.
Roomster 5
http://www.roomster.net
Roomster is a very popular and great way to find new roommates. All you need to do is fill out a short form for free membership registration and then you can post your listing of an available room or search for someone else’s. For no fee, you can have access to extensive information about potential roommates, pictures included, and the ability to email them via Roomster’s internal mail system. Roomster does not give you someone else’s personal contact information but the ability to email each other for free internally, something that most of these services do not offer, allows you and he or she to disclose more specific contact information at your will if you so choose.
Roommates 4 You 5
http://www.roommates4you.com/
Simply type in the desired location of your new residence, hit send and a comprehensive list of all the roommates in this area will come up. The listings are not as detailed as most of the other roommate services out there are, but really they cover the important basics. Even better, to contact them, there is no need to fill out lengthy forms or register for membership, no fee charged. Simply fill out their internal message form and they will deliver it to the person’s inbox. Note that Roommates4You does not give you their direct contact details but clearly this is easily obtainable with a successful email correspondence.
Roommates Nationwide 4.5
http://www.roommatesnationwide.com/
Roommates Nationwide Classifieds listing service is free and awesome. No need to register or give out your personal information for their junk mailing satisfaction in order to gain the information you need. Simply follow the above link to the site and with an easy navigational interface, you should be able to obtain access to listings in your state in no time. Contact email addresses are listed in clear view at the top of each ad. Since roommates who have a room to offer and those who need a place to share can all post for free as well as search on this site, it is worth using as a resource. Traffic seems limited, as not every major location in the US contains relevant ads, but until the site increases its popularity, I suppose you will have to just check back regularly to view the updated database.
Mwendo 4.5
http://www.mwendo.com
This general housing assistance service derives its name, Mwendo from the Swahilian term meaning to voyage or to travel. Despite the fact that it comes up somewhat far down in the search engine results with roommate and apartment related key words, it is an outstanding resource for any of your roommate seeking needs. You can search for roommates and rooms or list your own needs. Listings without pictures are free of charge.
Room You 4.5
http://www.roomyou.com
This is another example of a site where your success will likely be one of a hit or miss variety. The determination depending on pretty much luck alone. Users can post ads and browse listings at no charge. If the roommate you are interested in chooses to give his or her email address or phone number within the posting, you have lucked out and can contact them directly. If they choose to keep that information anonymous you will have to send them a message through the Website secure email form and wait for them to get back to you. You may also view and post pictures on this website.
For Roommates 4.5
http://www.forroommates.com/
This website offers a free service to help you find a roommate to live with. It does require a registration to view any profiles but the form you must fill out to sign up is very short. There doesn’t seem to be too many listings in their database at this time but one rare attribute they have is the ability to write or read reviews about each user’s past experiences.
Roommate2Go 3.5
http://www.roommate2go.com
This service is now free to post and view ads, unless you choose to make your ad more noticeable. You do need to register with an ad of your own though in order to see any profiles or send any messages. The site is decent and could likely be very useful for your roommate search depending on the database of other roommates at the given time of your active membership. Like some of the other ones, this site keeps your email address anonymous, so you will have to depend on the other person’s interest to initiate any kind of mutual correspondence.
Rent.com
http://www.rent.com/roommates 3.5
The roommate section of the Rent.com housing resource website confident and credible but a little confusing as far as details go. At no charge to you, post your profile for roommates seeking roommates or perform your own searches based on your own criteria. You do have to provide your email address in order to search the roommate database, which agrees to let Rent.com occasionally send you property updates. A search will pull up results with basic information. Then, in order to see the contact details, which are usually the stuff most people are going to want anyway, you do have to unfortunately fill out your own page of profile questions to submit. It was unclear during my 20-minute site exploration how extensively you are able to contact others, but I am fairly certain that they use an internal system to keep email addresses anonymous. I didn’t take the time to make up a profile just to ascertain this info, but I feel very confident that once you start corresponding, an easy way to exchange contact details becomes available. The site content swears up and down that there is one kind of membership and it is the standard, free one, which leads me to strongly believe that you will not be tricked into upgrading to a paid membership status at any time.
IhomesDirect 3
http://www.ihomeconnect.com/
This roommate and housing match service is thorough and 100% free whether you want to advertise your available room or perform a roommate search. I would recommend it as an option, but it shouldn’t be the first place you turn. The only reason for this is because it doesn’t seem to get as much traffic as some of these other roommates. It’s a good resource to know about though, and perhaps they will grow more in popularity in the future as people become more aware that they exist.
Rent Grazer 3
http://rentgrazer.com
Rentgrazer.com is another site that may take some time to grow in popularity. While you have the capability to search for roommates and post your own wanted ad for free, the navigation seems to be a bit annoying as it currently stands. Let it be acknowledged though that according to the website, the company is in the process of making some changes; hopefully a quicker and easier way to search will be one of them. I do recommend this site as long as again, you don’t depend on it to show you everything that is out there. Due to its apparently less frequent traffic, the listings on here appear to be primarily posted by management companies or realtors as opposed to roommates. There is a special section for roommate matching only, but in my experience so far, the cities that are covered are fairly limited in scope.
Share Rent 3
http://sharerent.com
It was quite a process trying to get information about how this site works. I had to fill out a profile form, register as a free user and make up an entire classified listing in order to determine anything substantial. Here is what I found: First, this site is not worth using unless you do have a legitimate listing of your own to place. It doesn’t mean you have to have a room available, you can also post an ad letting people know what you are looking for. But there seems absolutely no chance of getting someone’s contact information unless you first place your own ad. After that even, you still have to send them an email via the Share Rent’s anonymous internal form and I suppose just hope they get back to you. This site is rated high but I only recommend using it if you are really really serious about moving and finding a roommate sometime very soon.
Apartment Frog 4
http://www.apartmentfrog.com
This website is great though it also seems to have infrequent traffic at this point in time. Keep it in mind though, at least for future references because it has the look and feel of a well-established roommate match up site, but an advantage over them because it is free. Roommate seekers on both sides can post their wanted or room available ads with basic details for any visiting user to see. Users are not required to register to search and the only time you have to provide their own personal information is when sending an email via Apartment Frog’s secure internal form. You do have access to phone numbers automatically, though. These benefits make it easy to find a roommate from all perspectives of the task and the ease of site navigation is sure to bring this site more traffic in the future. Keep an eye on this one.
Roommates.com 2
http://www.roommates.com
In order to analyze this website to give you all a proper and accurate review, I have signed up and posted a profile. I would like to just add the disclaimer that as is often the case with many of these match up style sites, dating ones too I believe, the company is very sneaky about what a “free membership” actually entails. Furthermore, they make it extremely difficult to find out how much a paid subscription will cost you, I’m assuming simply because they don’t want to scare people away too quickly. So, that being said, keep in mind that this site, being a particularly tricky one, did appear, during my entire 30 minutes of scouring through it, to be free of charge for decent access to useful information. In other words, after I went through the treacherous process of signing up and filling out my “profile”, it did appear that I could send and receive emails with other roommate members completely free of charge. And within these internal emails, if one so desires, which in this game many people often do, he or she can disclose the proper contact details to the other person they are interested in corresponding with. There is something called a Choice membership that you can pay to upgrade to, but this does not so far seem to be worth it, even though it is extremely cheap. I’m not sure what to say on this one, so go with your instinct. It does take quite awhile to sign up. I had to list it though because it very well may be one of the few free services out there. Good luck.
Roommates Online Network 3
http://www.roommatesonline.net This service is free but quite annoying to navigate through in order to figure that out. So I suggest taking my word for it and going about your business in hopes that they will not change this wonderful policy, in an effort to spare yourself of the unnecessary frustration that I was forced to experience. The key to this site is that to avoid such time wasting grievances, you really must succumb to the proper registration immediately upon visiting the Roommates Online Network homepage. You really can’t do anything substantial until you are registered. It is free, though, and once you sign up you have immediate access to the various ads that have been placed by other people looking for roommates. You also can post your own. My best suggestion is that once signed in, go right to the link on top that says “Post/View Ads” or “Quick Search” and pull up the results for your criteria. Hopefully the people you are interested in will provide their contact info within their listing, but many will not. In that case, you can send an internal email offering your own and they can contact you. You can also opt to stick within the realm of their internal correspondence system if you desire to keep your email address anonymous.
