Why Personality-Based Matching Beats Browsing Random Listings

You Optimize for Price and Location, Not Compatibility

When scrolling through listings, the first filters people apply are always price and location. These are important, but they tell you nothing about whether the person behind the listing is someone you can share a kitchen, bathroom, and daily routine with for months or years.

Research from the Journal of Environmental Psychology shows that interpersonal compatibility, not physical space or cost, is the primary predictor of residential satisfaction in shared housing. A cheaper room with an incompatible flatmate is not actually cheaper when you factor in the stress, lost sleep, and eventual cost of moving out early.

First Impressions Are Unreliable

Even when you meet a potential flatmate in person, a 30-minute conversation is a poor predictor of long-term compatibility. People present their best selves during viewings. They are polite, accommodating, and enthusiastic. The traits that cause conflict, such as noise tolerance, cleanliness standards, guest policies, and communication styles, only emerge after weeks of cohabitation.

A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that first impressions correlate with actual personality traits at only 0.20 to 0.30, meaning first meetings capture less than 10 percent of who someone truly is in daily life.

Listings Lack Critical Information

Typical flatmate listings include the room size, rent amount, available date, and sometimes a vague description like 'looking for someone clean and respectful.' This omits the information that actually determines whether two people can happily cohabitate.

• Sleep and wake schedules (a night owl and an early bird are a classic conflict pair)
• Noise sensitivity and tolerance (music, calls, guests)
• Cleanliness standards and division of chores
• Socializing patterns (how often guests visit, shared meals vs. independence)
• Work-from-home habits (occupying shared spaces during the day)
• Conflict resolution style (direct confrontation vs. avoidance)
• Personal space boundaries and privacy expectations

None of these factors appear in a standard listing. Yet each one is a potential source of daily friction. Flatmate horror stories almost always trace back to mismatches on these dimensions, not to the room being too small or the rent too high.

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

When you create a Domkaspot profile, you answer a series of questions designed to measure your position on five core personality dimensions, each of which has direct implications for shared living.

• Conscientiousness predicts cleanliness standards, reliability with rent and chores, and respect for shared agreements. High-conscientiousness people and low-conscientiousness people routinely clash over dishes, trash, and household maintenance.
• Agreeableness predicts how conflicts are handled, willingness to compromise, and general social warmth. Low agreeableness does not mean unfriendly, but it does mean more direct and potentially abrasive communication.
• Extraversion predicts socialization patterns, noise levels, guest frequency, and energy in shared spaces. Mismatched extraversion is the single most common source of flatmate tension.
• Neuroticism (emotional stability) predicts stress responses, sensitivity to disruptions, and emotional reactivity in shared living situations. It affects how someone handles a messy kitchen or a noisy evening.
• Openness to Experience predicts flexibility with different lifestyles, food preferences, cultural norms, and household routines. Higher openness correlates with greater tolerance for unconventional flatmate habits.

Behavioral Preferences Layer

Beyond personality traits, Domkaspot's matching evaluates concrete behavioral preferences that directly affect daily cohabitation.

• Sleep schedule (early riser, night owl, or flexible)
• Cleanliness expectations (from relaxed to meticulous)
• Noise tolerance and quiet hours preference
• Cooking and kitchen habits (shared meals, independent cooking, takeout)
• Guest and partner overnight policies
• Smoking and substance preferences
• Pet ownership and tolerance
• Work-from-home frequency and space needs

Weighted Compatibility Scoring

Not all factors carry equal weight. Domkaspot's matching algorithm uses weighted scoring based on research into which compatibility factors most strongly predict long-term satisfaction. Conscientiousness alignment, for example, is weighted more heavily than openness, because cleanliness and reliability disagreements cause more frequent and more intense conflicts than differences in cultural interests.

The result is a compatibility score that reflects genuine, research-backed predictions about how well two people will cohabitate, not just whether they both happen to be looking for a room in Mokotow. Learn more about how the matching process works.

These figures draw on a combination of academic research on roommate matching (notably from university housing studies in the US and Europe) and early data from personality-based matching platforms. The consistent finding is that compatibility-based selection dramatically outperforms random or convenience-based selection on every meaningful outcome.

The financial implications are significant as well. An early lease termination typically costs 2,000 to 5,000 PLN in moving expenses, lost deposits, overlapping rent, and the time spent searching again. Avoiding even one premature move saves more than the cost of spending time on a proper matching process.

The Photo Bias

Listings with better photos get dramatically more responses, regardless of the actual quality of the living situation. A well-lit room with a nice plant gets 4x more inquiries than a perfectly fine room photographed poorly. You think you are evaluating the living situation, but you are actually evaluating photography skills.

The Similarity Bias

People overwhelmingly choose flatmates who seem similar to themselves in superficial ways: same age, same nationality, same profession. But research shows that surface similarity is a poor predictor of living compatibility. Two 25-year-old software developers can have completely incompatible living styles, while a 22-year-old student and a 35-year-old professional might be perfectly matched on the dimensions that actually matter.

The Availability Bias

Under time pressure (lease ending, semester starting), people choose the first acceptable option rather than the best option. Personality-based matching front-loads the compatibility evaluation, so even when you are in a hurry, the first results you see are the most compatible ones, not just the most recently posted.