Three women searching for the perfect housemate have been branded ‘marketing geniuses’ after advertising their spare room for rent on Grindr.
Cliodhna Heffernan said a room became available in their female-only house and, wanting to ‘change things up a bit’, they set out to find a male housemate.
Despite sharing ads on the usual platforms, including SpareRoom, they couldn’t find that special someone who would be ‘the right fit’.
The 27-year-old said her gay best friend suggested they advertise the vacancy on Grindr, a dating app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people, so she decided to give it a go.
But when the buying assistant woke up she was flooded with messages from prospective housemates and a tweet shared online with a picture of the ad has proved a hit on social media, racking up more than 22,000 likes and retweets.
Cliodhna, from Birmingham, West Midlands, says: ‘We had a house with four girls and one of them was moving out.
‘We weren’t adamant that we wanted a male to move in, but we thought it would be a nice change to bring a bit of masculine energy into the house and change things up.
‘It was never a discussion of, “oh we want a gay man”, it was just, “oh we want a man”.
‘We had guys come to the house and it just wasn’t the right fit and I had a discussion with my gay best friend and was just saying we hadn’t found anybody yet and he was like “why don’t you just make a profile and advertise on Grindr?”
‘I had never thought about taking that approach before. Obviously, we’d had it up on SpareRoom so I didn’t really think anything of it and just made the profile.’
Cliodhna says she moved into her current house in Birmingham in August before 28-year-old hairdresser Ellis Henry and 25-year-old sales operation manager Shannon Creen joined her a month later.
The advert they posted read: ‘Three girls in their mid to late 20s, young professionals, looking to fill a room in Moseley centre. Modern house, social and good vibes xx’
‘I’ve seen comments from people saying, “these girls are just looking for a gay best friend”, and it wasn’t like we had sat around and been like – “oh my God, how can we become friends with a gay man?” It wasn’t like that at all.
‘I suppose the whole process behind it was, a lot of my close friends over here are gay and we are very involved in the gay community so every weekend since I’ve come over [from Ireland], we’ve gone out in the gay village in Birmingham.
‘It just felt like exploring that option would be a good idea and a gay man would probably be a good fit.
‘But in saying that, I did have guys message me on Grindr who said that they were straight or bisexual and asked “are you just looking for a gay man?” and I made that clear we were looking for anybody.
‘Our main thing is that we are a very social house. There’s always somebody there, a lot of us work from home most of the time and we just want somebody who’s going to be that fit.
‘I feel like I’ve got so lucky in the house that I’ve moved in at the minute that we all moved in and just clicked, and we’re looking for that person that’s outgoing, fun and going to fit in.’
A screenshot of Cliodhna’s Grindr profile, which shared a photo of her with Ellis and Shannon, was shared on Twitter and has received more than 20,700 likes.
Twitter user Henny wrote: ‘Queens, I’d move in.’
Another commented: ‘That’s actually so cool especially considering how hard it can be for men and queer angels to find roommates sometimes. Marketing genius.’
Herbert Steven Veras added: ‘All I see is INTELLIGENCE.’
Grindr have been contacted for comment.
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