You've trawled the newspaper and endless shop windows looking for spare rooms to rent and have visited some places only to find your housemates-to-be just aren't your kind of people. Or, your current housemates make Big Brother contestants look like angels.

These are problems familiar to tenants but they are being swept away by a new craze in rental house-hunting known as speed flatmating.

The idea, which adopts the same format as speed dating, was dreamt up by business partners Gemma Craft and Rupert Hunt when conducting research for a new flat-hunting website for their company Page Developers.

Gemma says the concept just popped into their heads, inspired by their clients' own experiences and a friend on the lookout for love.

She said: "We'd had some horror stories from people who have advertised rooms to rent in the past.

"Rupert and I were discussing ideas for extra services on our site when a friend told us they had been to a speed dating event the night before and suddenly it clicked speed flatmating."

Each speed flatmater gets a score card and four to five minutes with their potential roomie. Those who tick each others boxes are then put in touch so a viewing of the available property can be arranged.

There are many benefits to the service such as being able to vet potential tenants, flatmater's meet on mutual ground, act more naturally and according to Gemma the event can often turn into a social occasion, as it is held in a pub.

She said: "We have had a lot of feedback from people new to an area, who perhaps don't know anyone locally yet, who say how good it was to make new, like-minded friends.

"It's a fun, laid-back evening and most tend to stay to drink and mingle in the bar long after the actual event has finished."

Events already take place all over London, including Clapham and are starting to spread across the UK and overseas. Each night is tailored to bring together those with similar budgets and the most appropriate rental package.

And if you still don't find a match speed flatmating offers free entrance to the next event.

Spareroom.co.uk carried out a survey last year and found flatmates are a more important factor to tenants who share than their room and the property itself. The only thing which affects a flatsharer's decision more is the location and price of the home.

Speed flatmating is not the only service available on the flat-hunting website. Landlords and room seekers can advertise vacancies, use the jargon buster which decifers terms such as Section 8 Notice describing the type of notice required by the tenant, if the landlord seeks to gain possession of premises let upon an Assured Tenancy Agreement.

The Spareroom service is the latest initiative from Gemma and Rupert, who started out in 1999 by creating the first London-based flatshare website intolondon.com.

They were inspired to launch the site following a struggle to find accommodation when first moving to London. They found regional press would use postcodes to describe locations, which was useless for an unfamiliar newcomer.

Page Developers made the facility as user-friendly as possible with area guide and interactive maps.

For listings of upcoming speed flatmating events visit the website spareroom.co.uk