John Blesso | About Sharehouses

What's a Sharehouse?

(Here is the link to Chance, the sharehouse that I own and manage, where Sharehouse Confidential unfolds.)

When Anthony Bourdain published Kitchen Confidential, he didn't have to explain what a New York City restaurant was. Even in New York, where the sharehouse phenomenon is most popular, many people still don't know what they are. Loosely defined, a sharehouse involves someone selling "shares" in a vacation house to other participants who all share the house at the same time.

Nevertheless, for the many New Yorkers familiar with sharehouses, the word can be pejorative, conjuring up images of warring cliques of drunken postgrads fighting over too few beds in foul houses where bathroom sinks are clogged with puke. In fact, there are many different kinds of sharehouses. There are dry sharehouses; there are sharehouses for couples; there are sharehouses for divorced people with kids. Somewhere, someplace there exists a sharehouse for transgendered auto mechanics who watch Star Trek.

Joining a good sharehouse is a great way to juice your circle of friends. (Especially when you join a house that is not a collection of cliques.) While no one ever talks about this, most people join a sharehouse to meet someone. With the pursuit of a (gag) soulmate in full swing, a lot of shares make productive use of their time, willing to settle, in the meantime, for another Saturday night. A good sharehouse is similar to a good bar--a place where a diverse collection of people duke it out with this aspect of the human condition. Most different from a bar, however, is that in a sharehouse you're guaranteed to go home with someone. In fact, you're guaranteed to go home with a lot of someones because you all share the same home.

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How to Choose a Sharehouse

Choosing a sharehouse is a bit like dating. While we all have prerequisites, good daters know that strict adherence to a list can sometimes leave you stranded. People who are open-minded often do better, and scanning sharehouse postings on Craig's List is no different. You'll naturally zero in on price, and a house's details, but be flexible and forget the first rule of real estate, because when hunting for a sharehouse, it's all about…

People, People, People
Avoid the many postings that try to hook you with the house's amenities or "toys." Instead, pursue postings that lead with the basics: age range; number of people per weekend; male-female ratio; number of singles vs. couples. Your decision to join any house should be based first and foremost on the feeling you get from the manager and the people--not the number of outdoor showers. If the house also has excellent amenities, consider it gravy. No matter how well equipped a sharehouse, you're not going to enjoy sharing a jacuzzi with a crack team of douchebags.

Go Straight for the Photos.
Before considering rates and schedules, go to the website and check out the photos from the previous summer. It's that whole thousand words thing. More than anything, pictures will give you a feel for the people. Skip the websites with photos that don't include people. Those sunny pics of airy bedrooms tell you nothing about the kinds of people with whom you'll be sharing those rooms. Unless a house is in its first season, there's no reason why a manager shouldn't make available lots of pictures of house members in action. If you can't picture yourself hanging with the people in the pictures, keep clicking.

Meet the People.
Most managers regularly host meetups with returning house members in attendance. Aside from the obvious reasons why you shouldn't join a house without taking the time to do this, avoid any house that offers you a spot without first meeting you or seeing how you interact with other house members. If the manager doesn't take the time to properly vet you, assume that others aren't vetted either, exponentially upping the potential douchebag ratio.

Viva Malcolm Gladwell.
With endless sharehouses to choose from, you'll need to narrow down a list of houses with which you'll put in the time to meet the manager and other members. Elevate your snap judgments. If the photos and rates check out, get the manager on the phone. The manager should provide precise answers to all of your questions. Regrettably, some less-scrupulous sharehouse managers will rent a house for the season and then commit one of two cardinal sins:

1. Indiscriminately fill the house with whoever wants in.

2. Overcrowd the house.

The combination of both leaves too many mismatched people to fight over too few beds. From a standpoint of personal safety, women need to be especially wary of the former infraction. Some guys, desperately lacking in social skills, overfocus on easy access to bikini-clad women getting their groove on. Fortunately, these drooling, Tex Avery wolves usually come equipped with multiple red flags. Still, they'll inevitably turn up in less-structured houses where the combination of mental instability, booze and shared bedrooms can be catastrophic for women. Join a house that is run by a discriminating manager who takes the time to put together a fun, cohesive group of socially-adept (and emotionally stable) people. A high rate of returns from the previous summer is always a good indicator. Let your snap judgments rule. If the manager is evasive, hits you with a hard sell, or in any way makes you uncomfortable, find another house.

Ten Questions to Ask All Sharehouse Managers
1. What is the age range?
2. What is the male-female ratio?
3. How many people per weekend?
4. How many couples vs. singles?
5. How many returns from last year?
6. Am I guaranteed a bed?
7. What do people do for food and booze?
8. What do people do at night?
9. Are there any additional fees?
10. Is midweek access permitted?

Beyond the Hamptons
While many people only consider sharehouses in the tonier, pricier Hamptons, Fire Island and the Jersey Shore also offer a range of options that defy popular stereotypes at a fraction of the price. (As a Fire Islander, I'm a little biased, here. Nevertheless, I used to be one of the many people who wrote off Fire Island as exclusively gay, not realizing that only two of its seventeen communities cater to gays.) Recently, access to the Jersey Shore has been improved by new rail service, drawing more and more people from the City. Simply put, it's not your father's Jersey Shore. Fire Island can be reached in less than two hours by taking a train and a ferry from Penn Station. Sharehouses at both locales often have much better beach access than the many Hamptons houses situated on the "wrong" side of Route 27, requiring a car or a taxi. Still, there are some people who are only ever going to want to be in the Hamptons. If guest list penetration and star-fucking are your bag, don't waste your time exploring other locales. Hit up the ATM, enter the taxi phone numbers into your cell phone, and then board the Hamptons jitney. The red velvet ropes will be waiting for you--as soon as you make it through the traffic clogging Route 27 East.

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How to Run a Sharehouse

Whenever people tell me they're considering managing a sharehouse, I give them the same advice I'd offer anyone who has scaled the catwalk of the 59th Street Bridge:

"DON'T DO IT!"

Or, at least, don't do it, if you think that running a good sharehouse is easy. Whether marching soldiers into battle, or trying to get a pool of people to pay for their shares, it is never easy to get a large group of people to do anything. Unfortunately, there will always be a contingency that will force you, at times, to be a HUGE dick.

Furthermore, getting a group of people on the same page is that much harder when dealing with New Yorkers. Unfortunately, most New Yorkers are terrible, sauce-on-the-side, we'll-be-making-four-stops flakers who nurse a mean sense of entitlement and quickly grow accustomed to having whatever they want, precisely the way they want it, at the very last-minute. You need to be able to get your group on the same page, and those same people that force you to be a category-five dick, will, at every turn, resist your efforts at group coordination.

Nevertheless, running a sharehouse can be great for your social life, and a good house can be a fun, concrete expression of you--a two-story, seven-bedroom recreation of an ideal world. Still, go into it understanding that it is going to be more work than you ever imagined, and that once you begin running a house, you will likely nurse fantasies of ditching it all to be a share in someone else's well-run house. Also, bear in mind that the more you structure your house, the more work you will create for yourself. (A house where shares fend for themselves is far easier to run than a house that involves planning, procurement and receipt tallying.) So, if you're still feeling game, call realtors and inquire about seasonal rentals. Also, Craig's List often has postings from managers looking for someone to rent their houses during alternate weekends. It is best to start looking for houses the summer before, when you're able to visit potential houses and see how people use them. You'll want to square everything away so that you hit the ground running when the recruiting season begins the following March.

Screw Verbal Confirmations - Count Your Cash.
Breaking News Flash!: People Flake. Don't count anyone as a share--especially friends--until they've paid a deposit. Your house will be full when every spot is paid for. Tell anyone who gives you a verbal confirmation that the only way to secure a spot is to pay their deposit, and that that they're free to take as long as they like to do this, just as you're free to continue to meet other people who are ready to pony up and commit. This is generally a good filter as people who can't get it together to pay what they owe when it is due, are likely going to be problematic in other ways down the road.

Handle Cliques with Caution.
I'm prejudiced against cliques. People who are secure and adventurous enough to expand their circle of friends on their own, are very different from people who want to join a house with friends. (Although you have to be on guard against those for whom joining with friends isn't a choice, due to their inability to hold down friends…)

Nevertheless, there can be advantages to dealing with cliques (especially for managers in their first season). The first and obvious advantage is that you can fill multiple open spots in one shot. Chances are, you'll be dealing with a point person who then sells your house to his friends. If this person is organized, this can save you a lot of time, while a disorganized point person can conversely create that much more work for you.

Avoid meeting any part of a package deal separately. If they are truly interested in your superlative sharehouse, they'll synch up their CrackBerries and make the time to come and meet you and your house members. (If they can't manage to do this when they're trying to impress you, chances are they'll be too difficult to manage once they're shares, so consider this requirement a good way to weed out problematic cliques.) NEVER offer a spot to part of a clique until you've met everyone, and explain this forthrightly to your point person. (This also applies to only meeting one half of a couple…) Your point person should find this condition encouraging. If they don't, move on. Cliques are a dime a dozen…

The Devil's Favorite Bar? It's called "Details."
When I first set up Chance in 2004, I entered all of the major expenses--like my jacuzzi and barbecue--into a spreadsheet, never realizing that I was also going to drop four grand at that sadomasochistic Swedish labyrinth better known as Ikea, or three grand at Kmart, an American retailer that I particularly admire for their good sense to lay out their stores in aisles. Bear in mind, however, that I had to buy a lot of stuff that rental houses are already going to have. Still, when figuring out your balance sheet, kiss a few grand goodbye for miscellany and then adjust the price of your shares. (A good conservative formula is to factor in an additional $100 per share.) Not all house managers do this. Some of them either suck it up (losing all desire to manage the following summer), or they continue to bill members throughout the summer.

Earn Your Profit From the Cost of Your Share. Period.
Except for collecting people's share of our food/booze balance not covered by guest fees, I want to be done dealing with money before the season starts. Explain that collective expenses for food and booze are just that--collective expenses. You're just collecting the house's money for consumables. Resist any temptation to pad or adjust what you collect. First, do this for the obvious moral reasons. Second, it's just not worth your time. All of the paperwork involved in doing this correctly is extensive. And you'll enjoy yourself that much more once you're able to put your balance sheet--and your profit--behind you. (Factoring in an expense of a few thousand dollars for miscellany does more than just protect your balance sheet, it provides peace of mind when unplanned expenses arise, because they've already been covered.)

Those abstinence-pledged Christian teenagers who wear those "What Would Jesus Do?" t-shirts actually inspired me to search for my own overly simplistic guidance, only I've found it more instructive to ask myself, "What Wouldn't Dick Cheney Do?" Aside from my strict, self-imposed rule of never getting drunk and shooting my shares in the face, Dick Cheney would never volunteer to be fully transparent, so I post up all receipts. Encouraging house members to look at collective receipts can also save money, since people tend to conserve items more if they associate a cost with them.

Kill all the Asterisks.
Those evil little stars that lead to two-point legalese explaining how the low, low price you are quoted for a good or service is in fact not the bottom line--while preventing you from ever figuring out a true cost or value--might well be most responsible for our hardened, contemporary notion that everything is bullshit.

Unfortunately, most Americans are used to being engulfed by a swarm of asterisks every time they pull out their wallet. You'll meet many decent prospects who will assume that there is some kind of a catch, that you are trying to somehow screw them the same way everyone else does. Take the time to walk them through how your house is run. Meanwhile, this presents an excellent opportunity to do your own sniffing, allowing you to sift through prospects and offer spots to the worthwhile skeptics.

Once you kill off your asterisks, your share price might well be a couple hundred dollars more than comparable houses that truck in asterisks or bills shares separately for cleaning or other supplies. Don't be shy about explaining this, or that there are no additional fees. Unfortunately, a lot of prospects overfocus on the price of a share. A guy once asked me why I charged what I charge for a share in my house, when he found another house that charged $700 less. I asked him why a Maserati costs more than a Geo Metro.

Your forthrightness should go hand in hand with thorough accounting. Remember the Devil's favorite bar and don't blow off including smaller, last-minute receipts in your collective expenses, because they do add up and you'll end up with a hole in your pocket if you don't get in the habit of doing this. In short, be perfectly transparent but never be apprehensive about making sure that all collective expenses for food and booze are covered.

Your Time is Valuable.
Running a structured house is a lot of work and will take more time than you imagined, time that could otherwise be spent earning money or getting stoned and watching twelve straight hours of The Kids in the Hall. If you feel as though the amount of cash you're taking in isn't worth it, get out of the game, or raise your prices. You'll never make it to the following season if you don't.

Set Modest Goals for Your First Season.
Your first season is going to be the hardest since you have to fill your entire house and you have no fucking clue what you're doing or what you just got yourself into. Always remember that your second season will be that much easier, but that you will still learn new things about people and about how to streamline your systems. Succesive seasons get easier, especially if you stay focused on the cardinal goal of successful sharehouse management: A high rate of returns.

Carve out a Niche.
If you have a particular interest, consider making that interest a focus in your house. People in my house are pretty serious eaters who aprreciate our heady mix of high- and lowbrow (like deep-fried Oreos paired with flutes of prosecco). If you're a vegetarian, start a house that caters to other vegetarians and keeps them far, far away from my house. If you're a kayaker, start a house for kayakers. Or, if you're a cross-dressing Republican, start a house for cross-dressing Republicans. (Although that niche may already be played, both in the Pines and in the United States House of Representatives.)

Fishing off the House Pier
Without trying to sound like an inmate at a correctional facility scaring visiting kids about the thug life, let me say that it is a really bad idea to get involved with anyone in your house on a less-than-meaningful level. This is Rule Number One.

It's really not that different from hooking up with a coworker. Of course, this happens all of the time, only when you're the sharehouse manager, it's the difference between hooking up with a coworker and hooking up with an employee. Don't Shit Where You Eat. Don't Dip Your Pen in the Company Ink. Or (if you're a woman), Don't Let the Pigskin Bus Pull Into Your Private Parking Spot.

Have I made myself clear? Is my own story of breaking Rule Number One in Sharehouse Confidential not enough of an example?

Right, so here's what you do once you've broken that all-important rule:

First, try to only break this rule when the person with whom you have diagnosed a mutual spark is absolutely, unequivocally relationship material. Then, proceed with the scared patience of those Christian teens when they start wondering if Mary Magdalene's cleansing of Jesus's feet with her hair was really just a metaphor. Express your interest when you are both sober, during daylight hours, and, even better, do this far, far away from your house.

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How to Date in a Sharehouse

Joining a sharehouse is a great way to revive a dating trail that has degenerated into a persistent vegetative state. Aside from the pool of people in your own house, you'll likely meet lots of people from other houses in your town or community. Most beach communities tend to attract a certain kind of person, something to bear in mind when choosing a house. (For instance, Kismet is practically devoid of the Paris Hilton Generation, since the post-grad kids are far more likely to turn up in Ocean Beach or the Hamptons, whereas the Hamptons offers a celebrity-infused social scene with which Kismet can't begin to compete.) Chances are, you're going to find people with overlapping interests/priorities in whatever locale you choose.

(In addition to the people that you meet at the beach, you'll also expand your dating pool to friends of friends, whom you'll inevitably meet during social events in the City.)

So what do you do when you meet someone who causes you to drop your schoolbooks off in the refrigerator?

In singles' sharehouses, people's intentions don't always range beyond the next six hours. So when yours do, there is no better way to communicate your real interest in someone than to invite them--during sober daylight hours--to meet up in the City. Still, you'll probably want to get to know someone better before putting the City Stamp of Validation on your interest. It is best to do something mundane, yet with a purpose, like touring the Lighthouse, or going to Fair Harbor to join the crowd that nightly congregates on the dock to share a cocktail while watching the sun set.

These free trial subscription pre-dates offer a low level of commitment that allows you to simultaneously express interest while feeling someone out away from the craziness of your house. However you proceed, it is really best to keep all forays above the waist until you meet up in the City, to see if your chemistry set still fizzes over amid all of that geometry, the way it did on the rough, natural planes of the beach.

In an article about Sharehouse Confidential in The New York Sun, Kirsten, one of my charter house members (who started a successful relationship with Jason, another house member) offered this advice: "We waited until September, until we were back in the city, to have our first date. We're still together."

That is far better advice than I could ever possibly offer...

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How to Hookup in a Sharehouse

Many NYC singles take their sweet, sweet anonymity for granted, not realizing that once you join a sharehouse, you're essentially walking onto the set of Mayberry.

People talk.

Most unlike a night out in the City, the details of your exploits--flattering and unflattering--might well make the rounds. If you're just looking to hookup, it is always best to do this outside of your house. Period. Full Stop. Amen.

While the perils of working in-house never dissipate, they do, however, become exponentially less thorny with each passing weekend, as the possibility of post-hookup weirdness becomes less consequential with fewer shared weekends together.

Once again, a great, unspoken secret of singles' sharehouses is that most people join them to meet a (gag) soulmate. Yet if August begins closing in on September without you standing in the significant other checkout lane (especially if you played by the rules) you may feel damn well entitled to a consolation prize, to a lovely parting gift. Fellow house members--who may have been off-limits during the high season--now seem as exciting as the new fall fashions, provided you are the kind of person who finds new fall fashions exciting.

Still, many people forget that (unless that merciless tease better known as "The Rapture" finally deigns to pay us a visit) there will, in all likelihood, be another summer. So while we all feel certain that our lives are going to take dramatic turns during the next eight months, there does exist a slim chance that your nuptials are not going to be listed beneath Philip and Gary's in the Times' Wedding Section. Likewise, some obscure force of nature could possibly thwart the master plan that inevitably results in your dating a Lebanese supermodel. It's always good to have an emergency contingency plan, so on the off chance that eight months later you find yourself in the exact same situation, you may want to give your cool sharehouse another go. While eight months does indeed provide a decent statute of dissipation for a summer fling, it is still best to conduct yourself under the assumption that you are both going to be back in your house the following summer.

So, if you do end up working in-house, here are a few helpful hookup tips:

Get Off Your Weekend Series.
If you're an A weekender, trade into the B series, and vice versa. If you hook up with someone outside your series, and then your freak-on fizzles, you will have spared both of you a lot of post-hookup weirdness by not finding yourselves under the same roof during your remaining weekends.

Never Lock Out Your Roommate.
Your roommate should never arrive home to find a locked door. This is unbelievably bad form. Make sure your roommate is not going to be around, or that he or she is in the know. A good roommate should be thrilled with your luck. Of course, never hesitate to reciprocate the favor, should the opportunity arise for your roommate. Better yet--and far better for your confidentiality--head straight for the beach. (One great thing about Kismet is that it is right next to Robert Moses State Park, so you don't have to walk far to be out of the sight range of houses…) Besides, the beach is just better. There is a good reason why a cocktail called "Sex on the Beach" has survived for more than sixty years, while a cocktail called "Sex in a Sharehouse Bedroom with Thin Walls Where Even People Who are Only Moderately Vocal are Easily Busted" has yet to be invented.