How to find a perfect flatmate?

Brighton is one of these cities where most people have to share their accommodation in order to afford to live. Of course I am sharing too so I am pleased to say that for a long time now I have been sharing with very nice and considerate people and, touch wood, things are going well.

Those of you who also share accommodation will empathise that this isn't always easy to achieve, as living under one roof with complete strangers can be very stressful and challenging. Ha! Living with a friend could be even worse. After all, we are different people, raised differently and most of the time we come from different cultures. Good luck to anyone trying to make it work naturally!

I bring this topic up for a reason. One of our flatmates is leaving, and we were just hunting for a new flatmate. As we didn't have any recommendations we put an advert on Gumtree and we received approximately ten emails straight away, then another ten a day for the next four days. How should we find the "right person"??

Firstly we knew we wanted a female, and that made it easier to filter who we wanted to see. Then all we could do was trust our gut instincts when reading messages and invite the people who somehow (rightly or not) caught our attention.
Of course there are no tips on how to trust your gut feelings, everybody has to develop the ability to do that themselves.
And "right people" do not exist. Just right situations and moments. Therefore we were not asking for things in common and we were not expecting an intergalactic connection with our new room buddy.

We were looking for a person to share the flat with, not a friend, and if a friendship will come out of it - awesome.
We don't care what kind of music our potential flatmate listens to and where they socialise. I think the only thing that really matters is that they should share our values. If you share values you will always find a way to overcome issues and learn from one other. Maybe a new style of music, maybe a new way of being...

For us our values were: work, honesty, consideration for each other and a need for having a place called home, rather than just some accommodation. We think that we found a "right person". But time will really show if we're right.