The roommate search

I’m glad to say I’ve found a place to call home! The search was intense and draining. Between choosing a suburb, finding a person who was responsive on flatmates.com.au, coordinating a time to meet, then assessing the meeting after (because I can’t not overthink), it’s such a relief to know I’ve got my long-term accommodations lined up.

First up: Create a profile

It’s like creating a dating profile, but with higher stakes. You need to accurately portray who you are, but also make it sound like you’re going to make a good roommate. If this profile gets you the roommate, you’re committed (at least for a little while), so I tried my best to accurately represent myself. Here’s what I settled with:

Hi, I’m Kate! I’m a Canadian teacher on a working holiday, and I love to cook, read, go for walks, or grab a coffee. I’m more of an early bird, and tend to go to bed around 10 pm and up around 6:30 (shift by 2 hours on the weekends). I don’t watch much netflix or play games, so we’ll never fight over the TV. I’d love to be able to cook us a meal to share here and there, but value my independent time to rest and relax. I’ll stretch doing dishes to every other day if the sink isn’t overflowing, but if I’m cooking it will be shortly after. Having my own bedroom is important to me, and separate bathrooms would be ideal, but isn’t a requirement.

Okay, great. Now it was time to start browsing the “looking for flatmates” listings. I sent/recieved over 40 messages to potential flatmates, and had some screen me, some respond that they had found someone, some that didn’t see the message until after I found a place, and some that were ready and willing to meet.

Here’s how that went…

Potential roommate 1: 

Female, located in Footscray neighbourhood, would have my own bathroom, new build, on major transit routes, gave me advice on finding a roommate and things to watch out for. This was the first person I met, so I applied and wanted to see others before committing. I also found Footscray to have a lot of vehicle traffic and not a lot of greenery, so I wasn’t the biggest fan.

Potential roommate 2:

Male, located in Brunswick neighbourhood (really liked the area), apartment seemed dark. Realized I’m not really wanting a male roommate. 

Potential roommate 3:

Female, runs a finance podcast, very similar to me (in name and otherwise), location was nice but didn’t have great transit access nor was it very close to a grocery store. She was a front runner, but I was hesitant about the location because it has many private schools nearby, which I can’t work at.

Potential roommate 4:

Male (had a female name though! That was a surprise), very personable and chatty, works from home, has a daughter that he has two or three times a week, neighbourhood didn’t have great transit, located in Caufield North (pronounced Caw-field).

Potential roommate 5 (and 6, if we want to be technical):

Two people, male and female, located in Moonee Ponds, would be sharing a bathroom with the female roommate, male roommate also had a daughter. Seemed nice, but after my best day yet, I really wanted to be near that school, so I didn’t have my heart in it.

Potential roommate 6:

Female, works shift work, had a cat (YAY!!), a stone’s throw from the train, close to the school I had the best day at, located in Williamstown, would have my own bathroom.

After meeting roommate 6, I was getting tired of meeting people and searching for the perfect place, and realized she checked all the “must have” boxes and many of the “nice to have” ones, so we agreed I could move in on August 12. My Air BnB goes until the 16th, so I will have a couple days’ transition period and to get a bed and whatever other furniture I want as the apartment is furnished, but my room is not.

Let’s celebrate me not becoming homeless on August 16!

– Kate