How do you find potential roomate in Bay Area (San Francisco: for rent, neighborhood)

[kyle242]

I started searching for room rented out on Craigslist and so far results have been disappointing. I find either prices out of my range (above $1000) or strict rules (FEMALE only, light cooking to no cooking, must spend majority time in room, other bs etc). I have been looking for quite few weeks and while I have nothing against them and would like to live with them 9 times out of 10 people renting out rooms on craiglist are Asian. As while male, I think their race preference kinda put me at disadvantage.

I met one guy in Fremont who listed on craiglist room for $650, but did not mention in post its for "bidding" until I met him for tour waisting my time. I did not participate in bidding because he was very secretive about it, did not see bidding process or people bidding so it could be possibly be a cover up lie in trying to get from me actually more than what he advertised otherwise I might have looked somewhere else.


When I send out emails to craiglist people. Only maybe 10% of people respond, even though in introduction letter I introduce myself, include many specifics they might wanna know such as what I do for job, work schedule, what do I do on weekends, etc.

Then I tried services suchs roomster, easyroomate.com, roomates.com but except of roomster, there are very few listings there and it is also hard to get response on all of them.

[Ruth4Truth]

Weird. I'd think it would be really easy to find a shared living situation in Berkeley/Oakland. So many students.

[gizmo980]

Craigslist is usually the way to go, but the problem is that you're on the "demand" side of the market - meaning, those who are RENTING a room have the upper-hand, as supply is less plentiful than demand. I learned this during my years in San Francisco, where I had NO trouble finding roommates once I had a place; but if I'd tried to find a room for rent, it would have been much more difficult. Is there any way you can afford to move into a (2+ bedroom) place first, then find the roommate before the first month is up? I know that's hard because you need the deposit etc, but you can always get half of that back once you've found a roomie.

Also, consider being flexible on things like location, race/gender/orientation/etc of your potential housemate, and other specific criteria... the ones where most people would think twice (like a shady part of town) are easiest to get, as I learned when I was renting out a room in the Bayview district of SF. It was actually a nice little "enclave" of the neighborhood, not even technically Bayview/HP, but responses were much thinner than when I was renting a room in the Sunset. Again, it's all about supply and demand!