When you’re not on the property ladder, it can often be hard to figure out where you’re going to live. There are often many constraints for renters when they look for a room to live in, from the length of the tenancy to the monetary constraints (which are often much greater for renters) to the fact that you can’t really make the place your own. This particularly becomes an issue when you are looking to rent a room, rather than a whole flat or house. With other people and the possibility of live-in landlords and hostile housemates to consider, it can often feel like navigating a minefield when you are looking to rent a room. But in this article we will take you through three options for services you can use to help you on this journey.

Spare Room

Spare room is a website and app that allows you to look for a room in a shared house or a housemate. It works by allowing you to post adverts, specifying whether the user is advertising a room, or advertising themselves and looking to rent a room. This is a fairly successful model for looking for a room as you can not only look for a room but advertise yourself as a tenant and there is the possibility for landlords to approach you if they think they have something suited to your requirements. 

This is also adopted in other countries, with the Germans having a very similar app called WG-Gesucht that serves the same purpose for people looking to rent a room.

With the tenant adverts on Spare room, you can select your requirements like gender, accommodation type, whether or not you want a live-in landlord, price point etc. and then place an ad with your picture and a description that explains a bit more about you and what you want when you look for a room.

The room adverts work in a similar way. You post pictures of the room on the app with a general location, list of amenities, cost per month or per week and a description of the room, house and tenants. You can give specifications for who you want as a tenant too, so people who are big meat eaters don’t end up living in a house with four vegetarians, for example.

The app has a built in messaging service, so you don’t have to give out your number to people if you don’t feel comfortable doing so and it notifies you when you have new messages. This gives you an element of protection while you are looking to rent a room

OpenRent

OpenRent is a website similar to Spare Room, as it also allows people to look for a room in a shared house, a flat or (in some cases) a house. It differs from Spare Room because there isn’t the way of advertising as a tenant like there is in Spare Room. You can’t look for a housemate in the same way. You can only post ads if you’re renting something out.

OpenRent also varies because it has a payment system, allowing people to place a holding deposit through the app so that the room doesn’t slip through your fingers. Other than that it is fairly similar.

This app also has a messaging system to allow you to talk to potential landlords, and numbers are only published for the landlord (if they choose) so there is no pressure to give your number out to strangers.

Zoopla – To Rent a Room

Zoopla is an example of a more traditional lettings website, which follows the style of estate agencies and letting agencies more than the first two apps. Things aren’t done directly between landlords and tenants, there is often an estate agent.

The first big difference is that this app advertises places for sale as well as for renting so there are two different markets on the app. You are also able to do things like get a valuation of your house so it is much more focused on house buying than renting.

But there is a section for renters. It requires you first to define where you are searching (the other apps ask this first as well) and you are able to view places for rent. The key difference is the types of housing available. The first two apps were more focused on looking for housemates and rooms in flat/house shares. This app is much more focused on those who are living on their own. There are more adverts for whole flats or houses to rent and there isn’t a choice to specify what you’re ‘looking for’ – ie the option to select ‘room in a house’. This makes it very difficult to use when looking to rent a room (although not impossible)

Now you know where to start, get to home hunting! It takes a while, and you usually come across a lot of rubbish homes before finding ‘the one’ but you will eventually find it.

Good Luck!