Room and Roommate Matching
Before the beginning of each academic year, incoming freshmen get assigned a residential room and roommate(s). Students usually receive the option of either picking a specific roommate or being assigned a roommate randomly. Through social media, new students join the official Facebook page or other forms of identifying the upcoming class. Some people post bios on Facebook, in hopes that someone will see that post and find him/her as a suitable match. Other times, some students may join online roommate matching websites, such as RoomBug, which allow you to add personal information about sleep schedules and preferences to find a match. These websites or institutions regularly have to sort through the variety of answers from the survey to generally match people according to their preferences of tidiness, sleep schedule, noise level, and other general inclinations. For example, for a group of four students if person A prefers C>D>B and B prefers D>C>A, C prefers A>D>B and D prefers B>A>C, then these matching markets will be easy to clear. Universities may also decide to put students in groups of 3 or even alone. These array of options may lead to some conflict, but generally, universities report that they don’t find many issues. This example illustrates how as variables of preferences increases, there will be more criteria to match and the price that the individuals will pay will come as consequences of the conflict between each other, or in financial means according to room conditions and size.
An interesting matching roommate market appears for those between younger and older people. This New York Times article reports how many young adults newly entering the job market struggle to find appropriate housing. The intergenerational match shows how preferences generally match, although it may seem odd. This is because finances play a big role for both generations. Websites and Organizations such as StreetEast, New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, Women’s Right Information Center and many more, try to arrange this intergenerational matching. This example shows how these matching markets exist and people are willing to allocate certain amounts of money to housing and hold various preferences in their search for homes.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704017904575409203223872556
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/realestate/getting-a-roommate-in-your-golden-years.html