A roommate is a person who shares a living facility such as an apartment

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

 or dormitory

Dormitory

A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...

. Similar terms include suitemate, housemate, flatmate ("flat": the usual term in British English

British English

British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

 for an apartment

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

), or sharemate (shared living spaces are often called sharehomes in Australia,). In the UK, the term "roommate" means a person living in the same bedroom, whereas in the United States, "roommate" and "housemate" are used interchangeably regardless whether a bedroom is shared. This article uses the term "roommate" in the US sense of a person one shares a residence with who is not a relative or significant other

Significant other

Significant other is colloquially used as a gender-blind term for a person's partner in an intimate relationship without disclosing or presuming anything about marital status, relationship status, or sexual orientation, as it is vague enough to avoid offense by using a term that an individual...

. The informal term for roommate is roomie, which is commonly used by university students.

The most common reason for sharing housing is to reduce the cost of housing. In many rental markets, the monthly rent for a two- or three-bedroom apartment is proportionately less per bedroom than the rent for a one-bedroom apartment (in other words, a three-bedroom flat costs more than a one-bedroom, but not three times as much). By pooling their monthly housing money, a group of people can achieve a lower housing expense at the cost of less privacy. Other motivations are to gain better amenities than those available in single-person housing, to share the work of maintaining a household, and to have the companionship of other people.

Who lives with roommates?

Housemates and roommates are typically unmarried young adults, including workers and students. It is not rare for middle-aged and elderly adults who are divorced or widowed to have housemates. Married couples, however, typically discontinue living with roommates, especially when they have children.

Roommates are a fairly common point of reference in Western culture, especially in North America. In the United States, most young adults spend at least a short part of their lives living with roommates after they leave their family's home. Therefore, many novels, movies, plays, and television programs employ roommates as a basic principle or a plot device

Plot device

A plot device is an object or character in a story whose sole purpose is to advance the plot of the story, or alternatively to overcome some difficulty in the plot....

. On the other hand, it is less common for people of any age to live with roommates in some countries, such as Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where single-person one-room apartments are plentiful.

There are many different forms of flat shares also, from the more established flat shares where the flatmate will get their own room that is furnished to "couch surfing" where people lend their sofa for a short period.

Many universities in the United States require first-year students to live in on-campus residence halls, sharing a dormitory

Dormitory

A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...

 room with a same-sex roommate.

Popularity

The change in the cost of housing makes the consideration of roommates more attractive. As the housing market increases, so too does the roommate ratio rate. When house prices drop, the opposite can be expected. This has been seen extensively in cities such as Washington D.C., Phoenix, and San Diego.

Student exchange

Student Exchange

Student Exchange is a 1987 television film directed by Mollie Miller.-Plot:Carole and Neil, two nerdy teenagers, get only perfect grades but have no social skills. When Carole learns that two foreign exchange students from France and Italy have gone to another school, they grab their chance and...

s are getting more and more popular with globalization and has influenced a lot in the Roommate Boom. The Erasmus exchange program in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 has contributed as being the biggest exchange program in Europe. Exchange students can live in university residences

Dormitory

A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...

 but a growing amount want to share apartments with other international students in shared apartments.

Roommates and house-sharing are not limited to students and young adults however. American politicians Chuck Schumer, William Delahunt, Richard Durbin, and George Miller famously share a house in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 while Congress is in session.

In Indian universities and colleges it is quite common that students share their rooms with a couple of others. Usually students in the master or doctoral programs are allocated with own rooms.

Sharing an apartment is quite popular by young adults (most of them college students) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, while sharing a bedroom is uncommon.

Challenges

One difficulty is finding suitable roommates. Living with a roommate can mean much less privacy

Privacy

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...

 than having a residence of one's own, and for some people this can cause a lot of stress.

Another thing to consider when choosing a roommate is how to divide the cost of living. Who pays for what, or are the shared expenses divided between the two or more roommates. Also, the potential roommate should be trusted to pay their share and trusted to pay it on time. Sleeping patterns can also be disrupted when living with a number of people, so it is therefore important to choose housemates wisely.