Am I overreacting for thinking my friend and I should get first pick of rooms after doing most of the house hunting?

I’m having a conflict with my future housemates about choosing rooms in our house for next year. It’s a 6-person house. I think that myself and someone I’ll call Jess should get first pick of the bedrooms, but three of the others disagree.

For context, I already live with some of these girls currently. When we chose our current house last year it was pretty simple, we spent about two days viewing places and saw around 5 houses before deciding.

This year was much more complicated. We spent almost two weeks viewing houses and saw roughly 18–20 places before finally deciding on one. Jess and I organised the majority of this. We spent hours emailing, calling, and texting landlords to arrange viewings and ask questions.

Between the other four girls combined, only about three viewings were booked, and two of them didn’t organise any at all. Most of the logistics of arranging viewings ended up being handled by Jess and me.

One reason the process took so long is that some of the people contributing the least were also the most particular about the houses. For example, the house a few of them preferred (which we didn’t go with) was almost an hour from campus, outside most people’s budgets, and had a very small kitchen with only one fridge and barely any counter space. They mainly liked it because it had en-suite bathrooms and looked nice aesthetically, but it didn’t seem very practical for six people.

The house we ended up choosing has things that seemed more practical for everyone, like:

• driveway parking plus permit parking
• three bathrooms
• two washing machines and a dryer
• a large kitchen with two fridges and lots of cupboard space
• an additional fridge/freezer in the laundry room
• a big garden
• about a 30-minute walk to campus

Jess and I also negotiated directly with the landlord and managed to get the rent lowered.

When we signed, it was basically three people’s first choice and three people settling, but everyone agreed to go ahead with it.

At one point while convincing people to consider this house, I said I’d be open to taking what some people thought was the least desirable room. It’s actually the biggest room and opens onto the garden with lots of sunlight, but some people didn’t like it because it didn’t match their aesthetic preferences.

Today we started discussing how to pick rooms, and I suggested that Jess and I should get first pick, since we spent the most time organising viewings and contacting landlords during the search.

This was met with pushback from two people I’ll call Ava and Jay.

For additional context: Jay is originally from this city and often spends weekends at her family home nearby, and her boyfriend also lives a few minutes away so she sometimes stays there as well. Ava’s friend, who will also be living with us next year, joined the group later and attended some viewings but didn’t help organise the search.

After the disagreement, I messaged Ava and Jay privately to say I understand their perspective and that us picking first doesn’t automatically mean they would get the worst rooms. I also acknowledged that in our current house they didn’t necessarily end up with the best room options. I do understand why they feel that since we’re all paying the same rent, the room selection should feel fair.

Jay responded saying she still thinks the fairest way would be for everyone to rank rooms or choose randomly so it’s equal for everyone. Ava didn’t reply.

I’m not trying to cause conflict, but I do feel frustrated because Jess and I put a lot of time and effort into finding and securing this house, and it feels unfair for the room selection to be treated as completely equal.

Would it actually be unfair for Jess and me to get first pick given the amount of work we put into finding the house?