Review: Craigslist Online Roommate Listings

Craigslist.org is a great resource for finding a roommate in large cities, such as the Bay Area (the original Craigslist), New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Their site is set up to list ads asking for a roommate to rent out a spare room. The listings are organized by date of posting and prominently display the amount of rent desired.

Pros

Cons

Craigslist.org is an online community-based forum that allows people to post ads for many services and products, including finding a roommate to sublet your spare room.

It is a no-frills, easy-to-navigate, and searchable site, and can be found in many cities. Because it costs nothing to post or to view, Craigslist attracts many posters and therefore many viewers hoping to use one resource for all their needs. For someone looking for a roommate to fill their spare room, this site is a great way to quickly contact many interested renters.

For someone who is looking for a roommate that already has a space, this is a great site for searching many openings with descriptions on the amount of rent, the roommate, and the apartment space. Some listings are even accompanied by pictures.

Unlike newspapers, Craigslist puts no limitation on the length of your ad. You can, therefore, be as specific as you want about the type of roommate you are looking for (neat, male or female, over the age of 30, income level, etc.) and even upload pictures.

You can report suspicious listings (spam listings). However, there is no real system set up to monitor who posts. This is both a pro and a con of Craigslist. To protect yourself, always meet with potential roommates in a public place and let someone know where you are, if you're going alone.