Hey guys! I’ve got great guest post for you today from Vanessa over at Random Thoughts & Acronyms and she’s gonna talk to you a bit about her experience living with roommates and subletting suites in her place to make some extra income. Take it away Vanessa!

Hello! My name is Vanessa and I write a bit about everything over at Random Thoughts & Acronyms. I just turned 24 and will be graduating with a BA in Economics in December from McGill. I’ve lived in Montreal pretty much my whole life and am climbing the walls trying to get out of here. Jessica asked me a few weeks ago to write a post about roommates because, as I’ve lived with 9 different roommates in 5 apartments in the 27 (non-consecutive) months that I’ve been living on my own, I’m able to offer tips and advice for her readers.

Living with roommates can be the best or worst experience of your life – depending on where you live and who you choose to live with. When I first moved out on my own, I posted a “room wanted” ad on craigslist and someone answered straight away asking me to come and see the bedroom he had for rent. As naive as I was, I knew two things, which I strongly urge you to remember:  1- make sure you bring a friend with you when visiting a stranger’s apartment and 2- never hand over a deposit in cash.

After I moved in, I slowly adjusted to the ways of the world – like it or not, when you live with roommates (I had 3), you all become a household. Chores need to be done, shower schedules coordinated and, above all else, you must communicate with the others to avoid a situation like this one:

(Vanessa is cooking)
Roommate: Excuse me! What are you doing?!
Vanessa: I’m cooking…
Roommate: That’s my frying pan
Vanessa: I thought we shared dishes…
Roommate: That frying pan was $150!
Vanessa: So… We don’t share dishes?
Roommate: I need to meditate!

To this day, I have no idea whether we shared dishes or not. I didn’t own any so I just used whatever was in the house and no one, aside from that one time, complained. In retrospect, I was probably a bad roommate.

Lesson #1: Ask questions when you’re not sure of something. Keep to your shelf in the pantry/fridge. Do your chores.

A few months after moving into that place, I decided to get a huge apartment of my own and rent the rooms out for profit. This is can be an appealing option if you know how to do it right. I rented a 3 bedroom apartment for $750 + utilities in a quasi-sketchy neighbourhood and charged my two roommates each $400 utilities included. This allowed me to take an unpaid internship while not depleting my savings too much.

Unfortunately, I was inexperienced in roommate choosing. I wrote a very detailed ad explaining all the household rules and what I was looking for in a roommate (I was, of course, assuming that people read ads. How wrong I was). The first girl who came to my open house seemed really level-headed and I told her that she could move in that same weekend. When she moved in, it took all of 20 minutes – she had one duffel bag of clothes. Over the next four months I found out that she was a runaway who was essentially homeless before coming to my place. She paid rent with whatever money “she could get” and was always, always late in paying. When I tried to kick her out or sublet my apartment, she adamantly refused to leave – even going so far as to tell perspective subletors that she came with the apartment. On top of that, I never saw her sleep. Or leave the apartment. And she would peep through the window that connected our rooms at all hours of the day and night.

Lesson #2: Don’t assume that people read your room for rent ad. Always ask where they get their money from and a little bit about their life. Don’t rent to homeless people.

Right now, I live with my boyfriend – that’s a whole different kind of roommate right there! In general, I don’t think that I could ever live sans roommate but I’ve compiled a handy Pros/Cons list to help you know if having a roommate is right for you:

Things I love about living with roommates:

· There’s always somebody home (I hate being home alone) but, since you have your own room, you are still able to enjoy the privacy that comes with living on your own.

· If you make friends with your roommates, you will always have someone available to lend a helping hand or a friendly ear.

· Access to more stuff: clothes, accessories, make-up, DVDs, CDs, books.

· Reduced costs, both in rent/utilities but also taxis/delivery charges from the grocery stor.

Things I hate about living with roommates:

· Someone will touch your things.

· Sometimes you want to be really alone to scream/sing your heart out but, you know… somebody’s always around.

· Your bad habits/flaws will get pointed out and you will start to notice bad habits/flaws of your roommates. This can become extremely irritating.

· Someone always “forgets” that rent is due.

Do you live with roommates? What have your experiences been like?

You can follow Vanessa on twitter at @vanessapage or join her facebook page here. Thanks again for sharing Vanessa! - Mo’ Houses

Image: Inha Leex Hale/flickr

Hey everyone! Today I’ve got a guest post from Anna, owner of Bargainmoose.ca, a site for Canadian coupon codes, discounts and shopping deals. She has recently purchased her first home, and wants to share her research and insights into how to make low-ball offers, to bag yourself a super bargain on what is likely to be one of the biggest purchases of your life. Take it away Anna!

Tip 1: Do your homework

When you’ve decided on the area in which you want to buy a house, do your homework. If you can, try to find out local property values. Google is your friend! Find out as much as you can about the local area and the state of the market. 

When you view the house, bring a notebook with you and take notes on absolutely everything you see - use this information in the negotiation stage.

Things to ask the estate agent - when was the property built, are there any other interested parties on the property, how long has it been on the market, how many viewers it has had, why the vendors are selling… get as much information as you can.

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Well, everything must come to an end, including this post-grad themed blog series. I’ve covered employment (or lack thereof), health benefits, and getting your first place all sorted, so this post is kind of a hodge-podge of everything else I can think of that you may need to know before you start your grown up life.

1.) If you plan on living with a roommate, make sure to keep a running list of everything you own, or at least everything of value that you own. Maybe this is because I f***ing love lists, and I am a bit overprotective of my belongings, but I found keeping a running list of all of my stuff really helpful when I had to move 3 times in one year. I’m telling you, if you’ve got a list, you can avoid a lot of “No, this is mine” arguments when you or your roommate decides to leave.

2.) Update your address on your driver’s license. You can either pay to get a new license with your new address on it, or just order a free paper sticker with your new address to put on the back of your license for free. If you live in BC, here’s the link to get started.

3.) Register to vote or if you are already registered, make sure to update your address. I’m not much into politics myself, but I do strongly believe that if you don’t vote, you can’t bitch about the government, so I make sure to vote in every election. If you live in BC, here’s a quick link to update your voters registration info.

4.) Update your address with the CRA and apply to get your GST/HST rebate cheques direct deposited into your bank account. I personally think it’s more secure than getting a cheque in the mail plus you’ll get your money faster. You can do all this via this link.

5.) Switch all your bills to epost. I love epost. I like that I can keep all my bills in one safe spot online and can print the bill out if I really need to. Not only does this save paper and thus the environment, but it saves me many trips to my post box. If you can’t switch one of your bills to epost, there’s almost always an option for you to get electronic bills emailed to you instead of paper bills mailed to you. This also goes for bank statements and the like.

6.) Buy an external hard drive and regularly back up your computer. Time Machine for Mac is amazing, but back when I was in film school and had to back up all my video files on a couple hard drives, I found this free program called SuperDuper which also worked really well. Take it from someone who spilled a bunch of Baileys on her laptop not too long ago, you need to make sure you back your sh** up or risk having years of work never to be seen again.

7.) Keep all important documents sealed in a ziploc bag. I’m talking passport, social insurance card, health care card, and anything else that’s important that you don’t keep in your wallet. If your apartment floods, you want to make sure those things are kept safe and dry.

8.) Have an emergency kit for your place. I don’t currently have one, but when my older sister first moved out she made herself a really good and cheap one just in case there was some natural disaster and she couldn’t leave her place. It was just a backpack with some bottled water, protein bars, flashlight, swiss army knife, matches and a little bit of cash (mainly coins to use for a payphone). I found this great site called Apartment Therapy that has some other great tips on how to make your own emergency kit.

9.) Find out where your fuse box is, because you will at some point blow it. At my old place, if I had my computer plugged in and tried to blow dry my hair at the same time, I would blow a fuse. Thank god the fuse box was in my room, very convenient.

I just asked my BF if he had anything to contribute to this list, so for all you bachelors out there, these tips might be helpful to you, or not.

10.) Make sure to always have two types of beer in your fridge, so if you have a guest come over, you don’t have to give them the good stuff.

11.) Don’t get a fish as a pet. It will die shortly after you get it and then stink up your entire place.

12.) Make sure your place has a real stove. Having just a hot plate to cook on sucks and is just sort of pathetic.

Got any other tips to add to the list?

-Mo’ Houses out!

Image: gabrielsaldana/flickr

I’m including this post in this post-grad blog series because honestly, when I was about to move out, I had no f***ing clue what I needed to get for my new place. I mean, I knew I needed the essentials, like plates and bowls, but other than that I had no idea. So, I started making a list of things at my parents place and tried to find some answers via the internet, but even still it wasn’t until I actually moved into my new place that I realized that I needed to get a doormat or baking pans. So, for all of you people about to move out, and who have just googled “things i need for my new place” or “do i need a blender when i move out?”, here is a running list of all the things I bought when I first moved out to save you some time and trouble. These of course are the bare essentials, so you’ll find out later like I did that, hey, maybe I do need a pastry blender or a wine rack. Let’s begin:

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When I first moved out, I lived without cable for an entire year. Honestly, I didn’t really want it anyways. I find when I have cable, I’ll always choose to watch TV over reading a book, exercising or doing something more productive. That being said, I didn’t really live without TV for that year. For a brief period I had Netflix, but if you are a fellow Canadian you’ll know the selection of movies and TV shows on there are few and far between, so that only lasted a few months. After that I just streamed everything online for free.

When my BF and I moved in together, we decided to get cable because it would only cost $10 more a month on top of what we were already paying for internet, but that still made our bill about $85/month. Divided by two people, that’s not that expensive to pay for cable and internet, but seeing as we both don’t watch TV often enough to make it worth having, and we are always looking for ways to save money, we thought we’d cancel our cable and possibly switch to a cheaper internet provider.

After haggling with our current provider, and seeing what the competitor was offering, we realized no one could give us a better deal than what we have, especially since we have the fastest internet offered and getting rid of our cable with our current package would only lower our bill by $10/month. Because my BF needs really fast internet for his self-employed work, we decided to just stick with what we have.

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Okay, so we’ve established last week how to survive unemployment after graduation, taking advantage of your work health benefits, how to find your first place, what you should expect to pay for a place in Canada, and how, no matter what, you need to get rental insurance. A lot of useful info I really wish I had known before being thrust into the real world without a clue, but I guess I just had to learn the hard way. Well, I suppose it wasn’t really that hard. It’s not like I had to go on welfare, was forced to live in a box in some alley, and I lost all my money in some pyramid scheme. But I will remind you that my first place had a lot of spiders. A LOT…OF SPIDERS.

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I’ll be honest, before I moved in with my BF, I didn’t have rental insurance for my last place. It wasn’t because I didn’t think I needed it, I just didn’t think I could afford it. I remember how much car insurance was, so i just assumed that since an apartment is way bigger than a car, then obviously the cost of insurance would reflect that. How naive I was. Luckily my place never flooded or caught on fire, but there’s no way of knowing if any of those things could happen, so please remember, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

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This is sort of the second half of yesterday’s post, elaborating a bit more on how much you should expect to pay in rent, crackhouse or not. It’s funny, I always thought I had a good grasp on the value of things until I was on my own and realized I didn’t really know how much things cost beyond clothes, shoes and tuition. When I started looking for my first place, I was honestly shocked to find out how expensive rent was. I knew living in Vancouver as opposed to a city in the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District) was a bit pricier, but it sure was a big reality check when I started apartment hunting.

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