When I graduated from ASU almost 10 years ago, I knew that living alone was not going to be an option for me. I was about to start a job making $15 an hour, and the median rent of $870 for a one-bedroom in Phoenix at the time would have been more than 30% of my monthly income.
I was lucky to spend my four years in college living with a friend who doubled as a great roommate, so we decided to keep a good thing going. We moved into an apartment complex in central Phoenix where I paid around $500 a month for my half of a two-bed, two-bath.
Splitting this cost worked out great for me. I got to live in a bigger space while sharing rent and utilities, which meant I was able to save some money from each paycheck. This arrangement became even more important when I left my terrible job and took on two part-time jobs—a great move for my mental health that I’m not sure I could have done had I been facing a larger rent bill.
Now, according to roommate finder SpareRoom, the average roommate rent in Phoenix is $901 a month. This is down from a record high of $957 a month in 2024, but it’s still much higher than it was even five years ago.
In comparison, the average rent in Phoenix for a studio is $1,084, and $1,304 a month for a one-bedroom.
The demographics of renters sharing space has also changed. In Phoenix, the share of roommates who were ages 18-24 dropped 22% over the past five years, while the share of those 55-64 rose by 51%.
“Given what’s happened to the cost of living in recent times, news of falling rents is always going to be welcome,” Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom, said. “But it threatens to cloud the bigger picture, which is that rents soared after the pandemic, and have never fully recovered. As a result, affordability has been stretched to breaking point. This has priced some young renters out of the market completely and it’s keeping older cohorts in shared rentals for longer.”
Tips for living with roommates
One thing that may turn people off from living with roommates is the potential for conflict to arise.
In SpareRoom’s survey of over 1,200 renters, 60% said cleanliness was most likely to cause tension in a shared household, followed by noise and money.
Hutchinson said one thing that can help prevent these issues is creating a roommate agreement that sets clear rules around things like chores and guests.
“The real trick with roommate tensions is to discuss things before there’s an issue. Chat through things up front or, better still, before you move in,” Hutchinson said.
While I never wrote down a formal rental agreement when living with others, I have used systems to divide chores. When I shared a dorm with four women, we created a chore chart that we used to mark off our good deeds of taking out the trash, cleaning the bathroom, etc. When someone filled their part of the chart, the other three roommates owed that person Taco Bell (the only meal we could afford to treat someone to in college).
When I lived with just one roommate in other apartments, we took turns cleaning common spaces and were expected to take care of our messes in the kitchen. Luckily our standards of cleanliness were similar, so we didn’t have to spell too much out to be happy.
“There’s really no such thing as the perfect roommate, just the perfect roommate for you,” Hutchinson said. “One person’s definition of ‘clean’ won’t necessarily match up with your roommate’s, but if you keep communal areas clean and tidy, make an effort not to wake people when you come home late, pay your rent and bills on time, and contribute fairly to shared household supplies, then you’re off to a great start.”
