Room Hacking
How I hacked my room hunt in SF
Searching for a single room in SF sucks! Many hours spent searching with seemingly very little progress or success. After about a week of messaging potential roommates, I had nothing. No open houses. No calls. No email responses. This made me realize, I either suck as a person or my email introduction sucks. I decided my email introduction could use some work. To determine what it was missing I decided to put myself in the shoes of the people receiving these introductory emails. So I found one of the posts I emailed and I re-posted it. I literally copied the post word for word and used the same photo, and to ensure I got some responses I dropped the rent by $200. Sure enough I received 20 introductory emails within the first 30 minutes. I quickly took down the post and began reviewing the emails. I realized all of the emails were boring and sounded exactly the same. The emails where genuine and truthful, but there was little to distinguish one email from another. The one email that caught my eye was a guy who mentioned that he was a trained juggler and he inserted a link to one of his Youtube videos. I decided that I needed to spice up my wording and I also needed some kind of wow factor. My new introductory email had some more exciting wording, and it started with a picture of me wearing a tuxedo from when I was 4 years old. Booyah! The response emails began to roll in. After a few open houses, I found some awesome roommates, signed the lease and moved in a week later.
Original post on my blog
