HACKER Q&A
📣 frankhorrigan

How can I find a bicoastal roommate?


I've lived in San Francisco for the past 15 years but spent most of the past year in New York and loved it. I also love my apartment and friends and life in San Francisco.

I live in a two bedroom apartment in the Mission district alone and I have to imagine there's someone like me, in the same situation, in New York.

What I'm imagining is that I would trade my second bedroom--currently my office--for someone's second bedroom in New York and we could both live bicoastal lives and travel between the two cities as we please.

I keep posting to housing boards with no response because, I think, the perfect person for this situation hasn't even considered it before.

I also imagine the perfect person for this situation is probably also a fully remote software engineer-type like myself.

Has anyone tried this before and had any luck? Where should I be looking?


  👤 Kommu Accepted Answer ✓
Hi! That's what we are building for at Kommu!

Kommu is a mobile-first social network that allows users to (1) discover and coordinate travel with friends and connections, and (2) propose home exchanges within their personal trusted circles to travel more affordably.

We are prepping to launch by EOY, but if you sign up for the waitlist (gokommu.com) then you can apply to join the members Slack group where friends of friends are actively listing places for swaps and exchanges.


👤 BigRedDog1669
Seems like a great idea, but it would be hard to find the people willing to do it.

Without a trusted marketplace for this, you might try to meet more people in NYC and ask around to see if anyone with a spare room is interested in doing it.


👤 matt_heimer
Are you wanting someone to travel with you or just swap apartments? If the later, have you tried googling "housing swap"? I know craigslist had a section years ago.