Find a Helpful Housemate

Helpful housemates on Cohabitas are those that offer something to the household or home, free of charge, but which is a consideration in the house sharing arrangement.

The help a housemate can offer and is willing to offer varies. Some people don’t offer this and that’s fine, but others offer a skill or additional support on an informal basis. What’s interesting is that in many cases it’s what they would like in a home themselves; a well-tended garden, a hot cooked meal, a tidy room, or a cup of tea to share.

There are economic pressures driving the offer of help in the home as well. With a shortage of rooms for rent in house shares, housemates offering help are also trying to differentiate themselves. It’s a win win for the home.

What sort of helpful housemate can I find?

On Cohabitas we ask housemates to register and add a housemate listing. In this they express their sharing preferences, their budget and their top priorities (good wifi, garden, extra storage space etc), but they can also add their ‘helpful housemates’ capabilities. 31% offered some sort of helpful housemate skill in a smaple of recently registered housemates (4,000).

It’s completely open as to what they say and makes facinating reading. It also helps to emphasise what they and the Cohabitas community feels is valuable in a houseshare.

What do our helpful housemates have to offer?

Looking at what they offer we can see some patterns. It might also give you an idea of what you might offer as a housemate when searching for a house share, or need as a live-in landlord when looking for a new lodger.

Men are more likely to offer support, with 56% of helpful housemates being men. But females, couples (heterosexual and gay), and paretns of children also offer skills and support.

Taking the Parents with a child group, we can see the variety of helpful housemate offers. The range is similar for all groups, but this list shows the diversity.

• Any help required
• Care or babysitting
• Childcare, pet care, cooking, cleaning
• Cleaning, laundry
• Companion cleaner elderly or owner
• Cooking
• Cooking/Cleaning/Art lessons/Personal Training/Baby Sitting
• Diet, health, nutrition and supplement advice and discounted supplements
• Dog walking
• Gardening / maintenance
• Gardening, cleaning
• Get to know your housemates, communication is key!
• Good carpentry and small appliance fixing
• Happy to babysit sometimes…
• Homework help for children,
• I can clean. I also love to cook.
• I would be willing to help with cooking and cleaning for an elderly woman
• I’m great with property management. I have been in property for over 20 years.
• I’m pretty handy with DIY
• I’m a creative writing tutor and author, if that helps
• Keeping tidy, lifts in the car
• Language lessons, cooking
• Laughter and organisation
• Looking after pets, perhaps kids
• Maintenance work, cooking
• Open to suggestions!
• Sharing food and things – also helps the environment
• Splitting costs on a cleaner to prevent any house cleaning disputes 🙂

What a wonderful array of help!

Top Helpful Housemate support

The most mentioned offers of help in a house share:

• Cleaning – 31%
• Gardening – 18%
• Cooking – 12%
• Cat/Dog/Pet Sitting – 11%
• DIY/Repairs – 11%
• Shopping – 6%
• Baby Sitting/Childcare – 5%
• Companionship/Chat – 4%

Selected others worth mentioning for their interest include:

• Freeze leftovers!
• Free haircuts
• Excellent at admin
• Support/empathy
• Business/career advice
• Spanish/Italian lessons
• Teach Yoga

House sharing is about give and take

Whilst only 31% of people offer to be a helpful housemate, it is good to see that house sharing can bring benefits other than income for the landlord and other housemates.

Reciprocity, also known as a bit of give and take, goes a long way to creating a good home and adds value to the experience of sharing.

Every household, whether consisting of people sharing a house or consisting of a traditional husband and wife, requires a bit of give and take, and whatever skills you can bring into a home are of value.

Housemates should tell potential live-in landlords / other housemates what they can bring into the home. Landlords should think about what they need. Both can include it in their listing.

How can I find a helpful housemate?

To make things easier for you to find helpful housemates offering a particular skill or support, we have added a search filter option to housemates. Now landlords or housemates looking for a buddy-up can search by ‘helpful housemate’ keyword.

So if you’re looking for help with DIY, just enter that as a search filter. Don’t forget to turn it off to see all listings within an area.

Please note, some Landlords offer a rent reduction for chores. This is different to inviting a helpful housemate. Always discuss your expectations with your new landlord or housemates.

Enjoy

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