Fights over who buys the toilet paper, heated discussions about unwashed dishes and full-on arguments about someone’s 3am drum and bass habit: we’ve all had a nightmare housemate – or indeed been the nightmare housemate ourselves. But a new test, apparently, offers the chance to avoid those housing nightmares.
The Buyers-Diggs test claims it can solve your problems by determining whether you and your prospective housemate are compatible. By posing questions such as, ‘Your neighbours are throwing a rager and it’s 3am. What do you do?’ it assesses what your ‘home personality’ is.
Questions come under 4 headers: Location, Location, Location, Money Matters, The Friend Zone and Chore Score. The idea is for you and your potential housemate to work through the sections independently and see how your results compare.
But should we take it seriously, or is it more teen-mag-flowchart-style-quiz than supported scientific experiment? And does it actually work? We took the test to find out.
As I’m looking to move into London with a flatmate in the next few months, I decided I was pretty much the perfect candidate for the test. I was already fairly convinced I’d get on great with the girl I’m moving in with – we’ve known each other since we had braces and I consider her one of my best friends. So I was pretty chuffed to find after taking the test that not only was our overall result the same, but our section results also were too.
Pretty embarrassingly, we ended up looking like a pair of elderly women with the result, ‘The Lounge Lizard’. Unless you haven’t already worked it out, this tragically means that we’re a pair of 22-year-olds in our prime who on a Friday night just love cosying up with our Netflix (yep, sounds about right). It also means that we’re apparently very well-suited as flatmates, which makes life easier given that we’ve already signed the contracts.
But what about if it doesn’t work out so well? I got a couple of mates to take the test with their existing housemates as well – which in hindsight could have led to some pretty awks conversations.
Lara (who’s 23 and in her final year of uni) and her three housemates have been living together for nearly a year. They agreed to all take the test. While they came out with similar results in that they were all ‘party’ girls who enjoyed socialising and going out, they differed when it came to other values.
A couple of them came out as super laid back about keeping things tidy, while the others were branded ‘neat freaks’. One of the housemates also stuck out as being way fussier about the interiors of the house. While the others were fine with frugality and all things thrift, she wanted more stylish surroundings and a cultured atmosphere.
So was the test right? Lara later confirmed that it was actually pretty spot on at assessing their personalities, especially with the housemate who wanted more luxury in their lives: ‘She stocks the kitchen with posh coffee and says darling A LOT’.
In terms of trying to prove that differences cause housemate incompatibility, however, Lara agreed that the test wasn’t exactly spot on: ‘Despite our differences, we work as housemates. You need a bit of everything to balance out the household. Small differences are helpful rather than damaging.’
This is something the test doesn’t really take into account: that although being polar opposites might not exactly result in an epic partnership, certain differences are actually a good thing. And anyway, how can you possibly measure the nuances of different people’s personalities with a 20 question test?
So our verdict? The Buyers-Diggs test is good for a laugh, but maybe don’t run over to your landlord to ask for your deposit back when you discover one of you is a Lounge Lizard and the other a Partying Purist.
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Some Inevitable Arguments You’ll Have With Your New Uni Housemates
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Follow Becky on Twitter @BFearn25
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.