Five Stars, Would Lease Again: I Reviewed My Roommates Like They Were Airbnb Stays and Now Nobody Will Do Dishes

We Rate Everything Except the People Who've Seen Us Cry Over the Microwave

Here's a fun exercise: open your phone and count how many things you've rated in the last year. The taco truck? Rated. The dentist who didn't judge your flossing confession? Five stars, left a paragraph. A stranger's guest bathroom in Tucson where you stayed one night in 2022? Reviewed, photographed, posted.

Now count how many times you've formally reviewed the person who watched you eat shredded cheese over the sink at 2 a.m. That number is zero. It's zero for all of us. We have built the most robust reputation infrastructure in human history and pointed it at everything except the people we share a lease with.

So I fixed that. I spent a weekend building what I'm calling LeaseAdvisor — a Yelp-style platform with one user (me) and eight reviews (also me, technically, since I wrote every side of every exchange). What follows is a partial transcript of my housing history, rated.

The Reviews, Anonymized But Not Really

Derek (2016–2017): ★★★★★

"Where do I even begin? From the moment I walked in, Derek made me feel at home. He left passive-aggressive Post-it notes that were actually just regular notes. The 'free snacks' in the fridge were genuinely free. He once covered my half of the electric bill and never mentioned it again, which in the roommate economy is the equivalent of handing someone a kidney.

*Verified stay. Response from owner: 'You ate my string cheese in March 2017. This review does not absolve you.'"

The Guy Who Kept a Fish Tank on the Radiator (2018): ★★☆☆☆

"Unique ambiance! The constant hum of the filter created a white-noise environment that I now cannot sleep without, which is a problem. Communication was limited mostly to the phrase 'my bad.' The fish, Gary, was the true roommate of the house and I have filed for custody in my heart. Docking stars for the night the tank tilted and I woke up to what I can only describe as a small flood with a heartbeat.

*Verified stay. Response from owner: 'Gary is fine. He lives in Ohio now.'"

Sasha (2019–2021): ★★★★☆

"Sasha was a delight with one significant caveat: she treated the thermostat like a personal fiefdom. Winter in this apartment was 61 degrees. I wore my parka to make scrambled eggs. That said, she single-handedly furnished the common area from a estate sale and once talked a cable technician out of charging us a fee through sheer charisma. Net positive.

*Verified stay. Response from owner: '61 degrees is the scientifically optimal sleeping temperature. This is documented. Look it up.'"

The One-Star Review That Ended Me

The exercise got real when I decided to write the review of me, from the perspective of my longest roommate, my college friend Marcus. I figured it'd be a fun little self-own. Ha ha, I leave my mugs out, very relatable.

It was not fun. It was a deposition.

"Me (2014–2016): ★☆☆☆☆

"Do not stay here. The listing says 'easygoing' and what that means is that he has no opinions about anything until the moment you make a decision, at which point he has one, retroactively, forever. He 'shares' groceries by eating them. His contribution to the shared Roku account was choosing the account password, which is 'password1234,' which I changed, which broke him.

The final straw: he used my last $4 of laundry quarters on a gumball machine bet. There was no bet. There was a gumball machine and poor impulse control.

*Response from owner: 'The gumball was blue raspberry. I regret nothing.'"

I read it back and felt something I haven't felt since my last performance review: seen, against my will, accurately.

The Verified Badge Economy

Here's where it got interesting. As I built out the fake platform, I started adding features because the joke demanded them. There's a "Verified Stay" badge, which in this universe means you actually lived through it. There's an "Elite Reviewer" tier, which I awarded to myself for having survived eight leases in three metro areas. There's a filter for "dishwasher-compatible households only."

And then I added the feature that broke the whole thing open in my brain: owner responses. Because that's the thing about roommate grievances — you never get to respond. The dishes pile up, the thermostat wars rage, and nobody ever gets a rebuttal. The passive-aggressive whiteboard in the kitchen is the closest thing we have to a review response field, and it is a terrible medium. It is 280 characters of pure resentment and a smiley face that means the opposite of a smiley face.

The moment I gave my old roommates (fictional accounts, obviously) the ability to respond to my reviews of them, the whole dynamic changed. Derek's response to his five-star review wasn't gratitude. It was an invoice. Sasha's response cited sleep science. Everyone I've ever lived with, given a public comment field, immediately became a lawyer.

Which, honestly, is the most realistic part of the entire project.

The Financial Fine Print

I want to be clear that this was partly a money story, because in America, a roommate is not a person. A roommate is a financial instrument. You do not live with Derek. You live with the $640 that Derek represents, the difference between a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom split, the security deposit you'll never fully recover because the cleaning fee is a myth invented by landlords.

Every review I wrote was really a review of a financial arrangement wearing a person costume. The five stars for Derek? That's five stars for below-market rent in a good zip code. The two stars for Radiator Fish Tank Guy? Two stars for a security deposit I kissed goodbye like a sailor at the dock.

We don't review roommates because the review would really be a review of our own budget, and nobody wants to one-star that.

Where This Goes From Here

I'm not actually launching LeaseAdvisor. Mostly because my lawyer friend (Sasha, ironically) explained that a real version of this would be a defamation lawsuit piñata. But I do think everyone should write one review of themselves from their roommate's perspective. Just one. Sit with it. Read it out loud in the kitchen you both share.

Mine ended with a line I can't stop thinking about: "He was a good roommate the way a hospital is a good place to nap — technically, under specific conditions, and never by design."

Five stars, Marcus. Five stars. I'll Venmo you for the gumball.