heres my 2 cents.
first of all as stated above , dont live with couples.
When looking for a roomate or room , always ask the basic questions :
do you work or study?
are you gonna be home alot?
do you smoke , drink alot ?
Are you gonna share teh food ?
the electrisity bill the water , gas etc etc etc.
do you have people over alot ?
etc etc etc.
Always go around the place to look how it is.
Dont sign a lease on the first day. dont sign at all if possible.( dont want to be stuck in a place with a roomate that you cant work with)
other then that its basic stuff , hows the chemistry between you two etc etc. how they act the first two days after youve moved in.
heres my story , just moved to Australia from Norway.
First i spent about 1 week trying to find a place , and since there are so many new people looking for a place to live there were always too many looking at the good places . So alwasy call and book a time to go check out the place as early as you can dont wait to the last few days.
So after a couple of places wich looked good , but i didnt get , i moved into this one place with 2 girls , they were sisters , seemed pretty nice and decent. So i move in after one day , and the whole **** came loose , they didnt even greet me when i moved in , they stood there and were making and eating dinner and didnt even offer to give me some. after they had eaten they left a huuuge ass mess in the kitchen , stuff all over the floors. they just went upstairs to their rooms to chat online . there were 2 bathrooms in the house , and i go into the downstairs bathroom ,to find the toilet is yeah it looked like some one blew a ****bomb in there and left. So i thought hey maby its just the first day , and try to find out more stuff about them talk to them the next morning , they said two words and went back into their rooms , i then asked if they wanted to get somethign from the grocery store as i was being polite and friendly they gave me a list and i went to buy it ,had to walk like 30 mins (they said it was 5 mins away) came back they were sitting on the sofa ,while i was carrying like 4 bags of groceries not even coming to help put stuff away , yeah , that evening i just said hey look i dont think this is gonna work out so im leaving. and did so , booked myself into a hostel.
so that night i set up a few new places to look at. And eventually i found this place close to the Uni and the guy seems cool enough ,i got the masterbedroom with my own bathroom. and 30 dollers cheaper a month only problem was the place wasent furnished , but today he gave me a lift to a place to buy a bed and stuff and even afterwards drove me back to the uni. he seems liek a nice guy so im really happy about it. and he said i dont have to sign a lease or anything if i dont want to , wich is good cuz then i can freely move out if things dont work out.
so my advice is ; dont pick the first place you see or say yes to you , always look at the place first , ask people common questions , and if possible , try to room with a guy cuz female roomates are CRAZY!!!