Hi, stranger, need a room?

For years, Murat Ekici's housekeeping business was a success, dispatching crews of workers to scrub the toilets and vacuum the floors of Hollywood stars. But in such uncertain economic times, even Hollywood stars have tightened their wallets. Many of them have cut their weekly cleaning service with Ekici's company to monthly, then dropped it altogether -- a situation that has had an unfortunate trickle-down effect.

Ekici, 32, and his wife are looking for roommates to help with the $3,800 monthly payment on their five-bedroom home in Eagle Rock.

"It was easier before to cover the mortgage," said Ekici, who bought the house four years ago. "Now it's really hard, so we thought maybe we could rent out at least two or three bedrooms."

But even at $600 per room, with free wireless Internet service, cable TV and access to most of the house, Ekici hasn't had any takers. In fact, he hasn't had a single phone call for the rooms in the two weeks since he posted ads on the Craigslist and Westside Rentals websites.

"It's unbelievable," Ekici said.

Or, perhaps, it's too believable. As the economy spirals downward and the foreclosure crisis escalates, more homeowners like Ekici are posting ads and trying to rent rooms as a means of offsetting their expenses. Listings for L.A.-area rooms on Craigslist were up 72% in October from the same period the year before.

"There's a definite uptick in rooms/shared housing ads on the site," Craigslist spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best said. "L.A. is a fairly saturated market, so to see the continued growth in this section is worth noticing."

At Westside Rentals, which bills itself as Southern California's largest home-finding service, "A ton of people who've never been in the market of renting out rooms are getting into it," owner Mark Verge said. Listings for rooms are up 25% from this time last year, he said, and "the most dramatic increases are in houses."

The increase in room rentals is a major reversal from what had been happening just two years ago. From 2003 through 2006, apartment rentals were down because single-family housing was deemed so attractive, said George Van Horn, senior analyst for IbisWorld, an L.A.-based firm that publishes quarterly reports on the rental market. From 2007 on, demand for apartments has been up 3%, and IbisWorld predicts it will continue to rise.

Single-family housing is still attractive, but it can be more difficult to afford -- especially when owners face increasing costs for utilities, not to mention the extras.