Renting the typical one bedroom apartment in San Francisco will put you back about $2k a month, so it’s no wonder so many people opt for a two-bedroom pad and a Roommate. After having lived in London, New Haven, Tucson, Dallas, El Paso and Cleveland, I can tell you that I’d gladly pay $2k a month for a place in San Francisco. I’ve got nothing against those cities, but there’s just nothing like a balmy climate where you’d be hard pressed to find more than a few days a year when you break a sweat and you don’t freeze your ears off. In any case, living in San Francisco does have some disadvantages, not the least of which is the cost of housing.

So, many people deal with the high cost of living finding a roommate – often by posting a roommate wanted ad on classified sites like Craigslist. I always thought there was something a bit strange about a site where you had roommate wanted ads near casual encounter ads. You just hope that your possible new roommate is not also an active user of the casual encounter section as well. Eeew, weird.

The so-called Great Recession is driving more people to cohabitate. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, over 228,000 “family households” in California cohabitate with a non-family member as a roommate. Moreover, the Census Bureau reports that 674,000 “non-family households” cohabitate with a roommate in California. Clearly, lots of people in California and our country live with people to which they are not directly related. The Great Recession has contributed to a 9.7% rise in the number of American households that cohabitate. When facing the need to augment your income and offset your expenses with a roommate, millions of Americans are already comfortable living with relative strangers. For a proof point, just look at http://www.couchsurfing.org/. Couchsurfing touts more than 1.2 million members who crash on the couches of other members to avoid hotel costs.

A few years ago I was in search of an extra 500 bucks a month to help defray the cost of my rent and I entered into a short stint with a roommate who was probably a super user of Craiglist’s casual encounters section. Needless to say, after a nearly two months of constant strange women visiting my house at all hours of the night, I asked the guy to move out. As a follow-up to that movie-of-the-week special presentation, there was this roommate who thought it was great to have fondue parties at my house every weekend with 10 of his closest friends. Oh, and I can’t forget the roommate who drilled a hole in my bedroom wall, presumably for ventilation. Yeah right.

Not all roommates are sociopathic or party-animals, but there’s one thing you can say about at least 90% of roommates, it’s a full-time invasion of privacy. Sure, some people really like sharing their living space for social reasons, but if given the option, most people would rather live on their own.

This is why we came up with the idea to establish a viable homestay market in the U.S. A homestay is a pretty simple concept that involves an ordinary homeowner or tenant entering the hotel business by taking in lodgers on a part-time basis rather than taking in a full-time roommate. The homestay business has been around for centuries. America is full of people that augment their primary income with part-time jobs. Just look at the ongoing (if not utterly surprising) growth of direct selling/multi-level marketing companies like Amway or Avon as a microcosm of our entrepreneurial spirit here in the good ole US of A.

We think that many people, if given a properly functioning and safe marketplace, will opt to earn extra cash by taking in lodgers instead of a full-time roommate… especially if you can make more money in less time than sharing your home every day of the month. We're creating the first efficient online marketplace that provides homeowners with the tools that will enable them to compete with hotels by offering lodging services to travelers.

It may not be a solution for everyone, but it sure beats trying to recruit your cousin to become an Amway rep, and it certainly beats selling all your stuff on eBay or Craigslist to make ends meet.

What do you think??

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