Quote Originally Posted by officerleeroy
^^^Very good points...

We've gone through 3 different roommates in the past 3 months and it's starting to get old. Especially when the new guy takes forever to buy his part of the groceries and eats all of our shit.

I would never get a place with one of my close friends...the guy I live with now I met through seeing them at parties every now and then and haven't had any problems living with.
I found in my experience that you're much better buying your own groceries. All you have to do is just respect your roommates by not eating their food and just worry about your own. Everyone has different tastes, so this makes it much easier. Also some people (like myself) like to shop more frequently and buy less while others like to shop less frequently and buy more. And then there's always the medium.

This makes it a lot easier to plan out your meals and what not. Sometimes you have no food or no money and you do eat your roommates food (sometimes for convenience). In that case, we'd just tell each other and get them back as soon as we could.



As for renting a house, are you sure you want a house and not an apartment? Houses usually tend to lead more often to parties, which lead to shit broken, pissed off landlords, pissed off neighbors, lots of clean up, or any combination of these. Because you would have a house, you might be pressured into being the one among your friends who has the party.

Like said earlier, look around at other houses in the area and see the price range, that will help you gauge the price of the one you're interested in. Also when looking, do a little driving around. The more schools you see around, the more likely they're going to be families in the neighborhood, the more likely the neighborhood won't want college kids moving in a house.

I think you'll be fine with smoking no matter where you are. Just don't do it in plain view of the neighbors/public and make sure you close the windows or doors if you're that paranoid.

If you're going to throw a party, it really makes a difference to talk to the neighbors first. Let them know by saying you're going to have some people over. Tell them if it gets too loud or if there are any problems, you would appreciate it if they would call you and you'll take care of it. Trust me, neighbors like this as they see you as responsible, and they appreciate you having respect for them. This will probably save you a visit from the cops in the middle of the party.

And last thing, when renting a house, take a look at the size of the bedrooms. It doesn't really matter if one of the three rooms is a master bedroom, that's to be expected, but it's gonna suck if two are regular or master room size while someone gets shafted with a utility closet size room. If that even happens to be the case, that person should pay a significant amount less of the rent.

Just some things to look out for, good luck.