Guide to Advertising Your Room

Here’s the situation – You’re living in a 4 bed house with a group of friends and one decides she wants to leave to move in with her boyfriend. The problem is you love the house, it’s in a great location and the rent is cheap (but not cheap enough for 3 of you to afford it together). Instead of finding a new place and having to move why not advertise for a new flatmate?

Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK live in flashares and, especially in the bigger towns and cities, there’s always a steady supply of people looking for a room to rent. Here are spareroom.co.uk’s 5 top tips for advertising your room.

 

• Be honest. No-one will thank you for making them trek across town to see a ‘decent sized double’ which turns out to be a large single, and they won’t take the room.

• Don’t just sell the room, sell the flat. Other benefits such as wireless broadband or cable TV might just be what swings it. While you’re at it…..

• Don’t just sell the flat, sell the area. If there’s a great pub at the end of the road or an award winning tapas bar then mention it. Let people know that it’s not just a great flat, it’s a great flat in a great area.

• Take advantage of photo and video upload features available for online listings. People respond well to a visual ad, they say a picture paints a thousand words and you don’t have room for a thousand words in your listing!

• Make it personal. Use your listing to give people an idea of what you’re like. You don’t need to list all your hobbies and the Brownie badges you got when you were 9 but a personal touch goes a long way towards setting you apart from everyone else.

The most memorable ad we’ve had recently may be taking things a little too far but it certainly stood out. The room was advertised as being in a :

Scruffy but interesting 17th century mill house in acre of garden overlooking river Almond, twenty five minutes by bus from centre. Would suit an articulate quiet and unassuming nature lover with an obsessive need for round the clock gardening and the ability to see the absurd in even the most dreadful of events. No lost souls, dope heads, reclusives or white witches please.

We’ve also seen (but wouldn’t recommend) :

 

Yipee! Wife leaving and Room to let!