I’ve had four housemates in three years. And I’m not the problem

I’ve had four housemates in three years. And I’m not the problem.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is doing away with the company’s fact-checkers at the very time we need them most – to verify applications for the role of roommate.

Gen Z likes to claim Facebook is their parents’ domain, but there’s one thing they do use it for: tracking down a place to live. Penry Buckley reported this week that the popular “Inner East & West housemates” group, where Sydneysiders can find or fill a spare room, boasts more than 55,000 members.

“Lovely sunroom”: Meg Kanofski at home in her inner Sydney flat.

I once shunned the sharehouse speed-dating game, handing over a high school recommendation letter to secure a private rental with a friend of a friend. But a few months after our first anniversary came the talk: no, it’s not you, it’s Woollahra. She’d found the Sydney holy grail, a cheaper room in a more expensive suburb. With parking.

Then came a period of coworker cohabitation, before my Canberra-bound colleague ditched the harbour for Lake Burley Griffin.

I resigned myself to Zuckerberg’s housing service. Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

How to sell the apartment? The hallway entrance looks a little like something out of The Shining (the only twins you’ll find are a pair of miniature dachshunds), but an eastern suburbs-adjacent postcode doesn’t hurt. “Lovely sunroom”, “train station less than 10 minutes’ walk”, “amazing bars nearby”. How to sell myself? “I work full-time, mostly in-office”, “looking for a female housemate around the same age”. Read: I can pay the bills, I won’t get in your way, and with any luck, we’ll be into the same reality shows.

You’d think sub-letting a room that fits a queen bed would be easy in a housing crisis.

It was a second job. My departing housemate-turned-recruiter directed dozens of contenders to her inbox, forwarding me the most “normal-sounding” strangers to stalk online before I gave away our address and an invitation to pop round.

There were two options when it came to inspections. The first, play real estate agent for a day and host a showing, forcing a queue of applicants to compete for my attention. Friends recommended putting on beers and a cheese board. As if the singles’ tax isn’t expensive enough.

Refusing to shell out for artisanal crackers, I went down the alternative route, having my suitors over one by one for 50 first dates. A meticulous schedule kept them at least half an hour apart, lest they run into one another and find out we weren’t seeing each other exclusively.

There was the highly recommended candidate who almost got the gig on the spot before she mentioned her boyfriend would be moving in too. Yeah, nah!

There was the British backpacker who swore she would stay “longish-term”. A video of hers popped up on my TikTok feed not long after explaining why she was getting the hell out of Sydney.

The winning contestant wooed me with a charm offensive. She didn’t just want to come measure the room to check if her mattress would fit, but also to grab a coffee to make sure we were well suited. The request alone was almost enough to pass the vibe check.

That was until four days after move-in, when she let me know she wasn’t “looking for a friend”. Had I read the signals wrong? Were we not astrologically compatible? Three weeks later, the removalist van was double-parked outside again.

Like returning to the dating apps after a failed fling to be met with the same crop of prospective boyfriends you thought you’d left in the dust (“fancy seeing you here again”), there’s a loss of face in readvertising the same room so quickly. Those same prospective boyfriends are watching you in the Facebook groups, too. But there was nowhere else to turn.

The second time around, playing 21 questions seemed pointless. A vacancy rate below 2 per cent meant some rental market sleight of hand was inevitable when finding a platonic life partner on social media. After all, I’d never mentioned the leaky bathroom tap in my highlight reel.

So when I chose my current housemate, there was no coffee date. We didn’t even meet. A phone call screener, followed by a final-round FaceTime, ended in an offer. We’ve since celebrated two Christmases and we share custody of a Kmart tree.

It may have helped me find my person this time, but I don’t expect Inner East Facebook magic to strike twice. As my generation’s fingers grow weary of swiping for love and old-school dating events make their return, I’m waiting for the pangs of nostalgia to hit the renting scene, too.

Future housemate, I’ll see you at the Woolies noticeboard.

Meg Kanofski is the Herald’s social media editor.