The cost of renting an apartment or a house just seems to keep going up and up doesn’t it? Meanwhile our salaries don’t seem increase at anywhere the same rate. Sometimes the best way to get around the cost of renting is to share your space with a roommate. Whether that be renting out a room or moving in with someone else.

Many years ago when I was single and had my own apartment I decided to started my own business and those first few months were hard. I had to build my client list and start earning money. How was I to cover the rent of my apartment? I got a roommate.

Finding a roommate wasn’t easy. I took out ads in the local paper and interviewed prospective roommates. These days it’s so much easier to find a roommate with the services provided by companies such as roomster.net. I only wish that a website such as this was available all those years ago when I had roommates!

Roomster is an advanced housing rental site. The site provides those who want to rent out rooms, floors, houses, apartments or condos with the ability to list their rental spaces. Those are searching for a room or home to share with another can look through the listings and easily find a place that fits their budget.

How Does Roomster Work?

Well as you can see from this screen shot, there are listings for all of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Roomster has a large and active membership and there’s thousands of listings from which to find a new roommate.

By creating a simple profile on Roomster those looking to rent a room or to sublet an apartment can contact property owners directly through the Roomster service. Likewise, property owners can search for potential tenants and contact them directly.

Of course you can go to the site, select the city you live in or the one that you plan on moving to, and begin looking through the listings without creating a profile. However, you will not be able to see the full details of the listing. Without registering you can only see a short summary such as:

“Respectful Renter/Roommate Wanted!” – woman, 65, San Francisco, CA, $400.00

Once you sign up and create a simple profile you’ll be able to use the search functions to find a room or potential renter:

Of course there’s plenty of other ways to search too. You can search through all of the roommate listings, rooms to rent, by rooms that have photos included, search for woman or men that have rooms to rent or who are looking to rent, search by a persons age, by how many rooms are available in the rental and or by price and coolest of all, you can even search for a potential roommate by their zodiac sign.

Additional features of the site include the ability to look at an area where a rental is located by using google maps, as well as the ability to leave quick messages, quick links, IM, and view the profile of last member that logged in.

Roomster offers free and full memberships. Free basic memberships allow members to search, post and contact all registered members absolutely free.

The site seems very easy to use and there’s so many different ways to search for a potential roommate that I’m sure most people will feel quite comfortable on Roomster. I know that if I ever decide to rent out a room in our house I’ll be visiting Roomster.

Check it out for yourself if you are renting out a room or looking for a roommate.