Support our non-partisan non-profit newsroom 💜 Donate now

The 40-year-old roommate

Marketplace Staff May 31, 2007
HTML EMBED:
COPY

The 40-year-old roommate

Marketplace Staff May 31, 2007
HTML EMBED:
COPY

KAI RYSSDAL: As we wait patiently for the housing market to decide when it’s done falling, the news has been of the follow-on effects. Falling share prices for home builders and heavy equipment makers, and whether or not there’s a wider economic impact. Commentator and New York City renter Doug Cordell says oh, you bet there is.


DOUG CORDELL: You don’t expect to find yourself in your 40’s and having a roommate. Not a live-in lover, a roommate. As in: “Could you turn your music down?” and “That was my milk.”

But having been away from New York for a few years, I came back to find myself priced out of the market. Forget Manhattan — I couldn’t afford to rent a place in Queens.

It turns out, when the housing market goes soft — as it has even in crazy-money New York — the rental market tightens up, because first-time buyers sit on their hands in their rented apartments and wait for sales prices to hit bottom.

Thus to Craigslist, and a share in some guy’s two-bedroom walk-up.

Life as a roommate in your 40’s: In conversation with people, I make only vague references to my housing situation, to avoid the embarrassment. I also skip any of my roommate’s favorite haunts, especially when I’m out on a date. Usually I insist on meeting my dates in their neighborhood — so if we go back to anybody’s place, it won’t be mine.

On the plus side of being a, um . . . mature roommate: You’ve proven to anyone who cares to know — an old girlfriend, say, who shall remain nameless — that, yes, you can live with someone.

Indeed, after several years of living alone, you’ve discovered it can be kind of nice to share — even something as simple as a newspaper or a bag of cookies. And even with a relative stranger — someone who walks around in an open bathrobe practicing arias for his amateur opera club.

The main thing is, with the money I save on rent, I’m able to afford things I couldn’t otherwise: better restaurants, a regular haircut, nicer clothes. In fact, I probably look more successful now than when I had my own apartment. As long as I’m not actually in my apartment.

And who knows? If the housing market keeps tanking, maybe I’ll be able to get a place of my own again — a nice little one-bedroom all to myself.

Or maybe a two-bedroom would be a better idea. Just to have the option of renting out the other room, if I feel the need. Financially speaking, I mean.

RYSSDAL: Doug Cordell lives and writes in New York City.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.