August 27th, 2008 by AllStudentRentals.com

With University of California (UC) tuition and fees running around $8000-$9000/year, and nationwide tuition also increasing, all college students have to find ways to save money.   Sure there are many ways students can go about finding financial aid, applying for scholarships, and taking out various loans to fund their education and save money, but I prefer to focus on the housing aspect of college.

From the chart below, you can see I tracked my apartment living expenses (for 5 years) that encompassed rent, electricity, water, and cable internet/TV.   My 60 month average of living off campus in the UC San Diego area averaged $294.62.  If I remove the one month that I subleased my room for a month during the summer, then my average increased to $299.62.  Either way, it’s very difficult to really beat under $300/month rent in a very nice area near UCSD and La Jolla.   During this time span, I live at Costa Verde Village and La Jolla Crossroads, both luxury garden apartments with swimming pools, jacuzzis, communal gym, and many other apartment amenities.

Cost/month for a 60 month time frame

Keep in mind that I never felt I sacrificed the quality of living during the 60 months of living off campus.  I didn’t live in an area that was visually undesirable or live with an area that contains a high rate of crime and violence.  I lived within a couple of miles of UC San Diego and within close proximity to University Town Centre mall, Whole Foods (WFMI), Vons (SWY), Starbucks (SBUX), Ralphs (KR), and many restaurants.   During this time frame, I did relocate three times (twice within Costa Verde Village) and lived with four to six people in every situation.  How did I do it?

Look For Move in Specials

Most times, move in specials would be offered to attract new renters and these apartment complexes like Costa Verde or La Jolla Crossroads would offer a partial month free or a 10-20% price reduction compared to the “retail price.”  You can get an even better deal if you intend to move in a month right before the major influx of college students are looking for housing (late May/early June or late August/early September).

Find Apartmentmates, Especially Someone to Share a Room

Finding people to live with is extremely important if you want to save money.  Living with 4 or 5 people will allow the utilities to be split multiples ways and toward the termination of the lease, everyone will be responsible for any necessary cleaning fees.  Just finding a roommate to share a room should save you $3500-$4500 over the course of a year.   If you’re someone who can’t stand sharing a room, just consider the $4000 savings you could allocate toward investing, food, or other college expenses.

Try to Live in the Same Apartment For More Than a Year

The more people have to move, the more costs are involved like paying for overlap to ensure that you have enough time to move from one location to another.  For some people, they may be paying for two places for up to a month while trying to make the transition.  Also the time it takes to move is very bothersome and time equals money.  For those that are light travelers and don’t own much, this might not be as big of a factor, but those who own furniture and bigger items will have to consider the cost of renting a U-Haul or a truck.  At the apartment I lived at, living for at least two years ensured that painting cost at the termination of the lease would be free.  Make sure to find out these long term bonuses before you commit to a lease.

Sacrifice Common Area Space

While this might not be a practical situation for all people, I rented out our living room for the first half of the time I lived off campus, which equated to an approximate $3000 savings over the course of those 2.5 years.  This does cut into the communal area for social gatherings but to me, the savings outweighed the cost of losing that common space.  For the more ambitious savers, renting out the dining room will also generate some additional savings.  I rented out a space (enough to fit a mattress and desk) near our dining table for about four months which yielded another $250 in savings.

Look For Subleasers While Leaving the Apartment for Extended Amounts of Time

There are kids looking for sublease situations while they are in between leases or just looking to rent for a summer session.  They can easily be found through Facebook marketplace or the housing section of Craigslist.  A lot of times, you can sublease your part of the apartment out for more than what you pay because people will pay a premium for a short term rental situation.  I would only consider subleasing if you intend to be away for at least one month.  Any less seems like too much of a hassle for the savings.

Sure, there are many other factors you have to consider when looking for an apartment or townhouse while in college but costs definitely should be within the top of your priorities.   Apartment chemistry, roommate habits, and proximity to campus should also be factored but are more case dependent on the individual.   Happy renting.

Source: Investing Happily

Remarks: Good article about how renting can save you money. Renting isn’t the only option for housing but definately can be the cheapest. Don’t believe me me? Check out some of our listings to see how low rent can be.

August 25th, 2008 by AllStudentRentals.com

Michael Rodriguez planted a “For Rent” sign one Sunday morning in the yard of a three-bedroom, two-bath house he owns in Salinas, Calif., a farming community 10 miles inland from the Monterey Bay beaches and about an hour from Silicon Valley.

That day, Rodriguez received 34 calls from prospective tenants. “The next day, I was talking to somebody, and I looked over and the sign was gone,” said Rodriguez, the broker/owner of Platinum Capital Mortgage & Estate in Salinas. “Somebody was trying to eliminate the competition.”

Salinas, like much of California, is facing a housing slump and a surge in foreclosures. But the rental market is humming along thanks to its relatively affordable housing costs and proximity to Silicon Valley, where high-paying tech jobs are plentiful. Salinas metro area apartment rents increased 5.6% in the third quarter, compared with the same period last year, and the vacancy rate has fallen to 2.4%, one of the nation’s lowest.

BusinessWeek.com asked Dallas apartment information company AXIOMetrics to rank the metropolitan areas with the best and worst effective rent (the asking rent minus any landlord lease concessions) and found that, of the 88 U.S. metro areas tracked by the company, Salinas was the sixth-strongest. In Tacoma, Wash., where there is an overflow of military personnel from nearby bases looking for apartments, rents increased 7.8%—the biggest increase in the nation. Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Long Island, N.Y.—areas with robust job markets—also made the top 10.

“The top rental markets were less impacted by the housing bubble bursting,” said Ronald G. Johnsey, president of AXIOMetrics. “The job growth in these markets is probably still good, though the rate of job growth is declining.”

Florida and Arizona dominated the list of metro areas with the biggest rent drops. Housing prices in those states are crashing, and so many people who could not sell their homes have instead put them on the market as rentals. Those single-family home rentals are competing for tenants with apartment complexes. Effective rents have fallen as much as 9% in the worst Florida markets—Naples and Cape Coral—where vacancies have jumped to about 17%. Apartment landlords are offering two or more months of free rent in some cases to fill vacancies.

The single-family home rentals are “affecting the apartment rental market,” said Jack McCabe of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach, Fla. “That’s going to continue to happen until you see a decline in the for-sale inventory. Once that happens, people renting out these units will end up putting them up for sale and that will lessen the rental inventory.”

Keith Oden, president and trust manager of Houston’s Camden Property Trust (CPT), one of the nation’s largest real estate investment trusts concentrating on multifamily housing, says the weakness is concentrated in places such as Arizona, Florida, and Nevada, where the job market is weak.

But in much of the country, rents are strong. People are happy to sit on the sidelines and rent until the for-sale market returns, he said.

“Fewer people are moving out of our apartments to buy homes,” Oden said. “Last year in our portfolio, about 20% of tenants moved out to purchase a home. In the first six months of this year, it was 14%.”

In Tacoma, which continues to experience job growth, many people are renting because—with increasingly restricting lending standards—it’s tough to qualify to buy, said Dick Beeson, broker/owner of Windermere/Commencement Associates. Tacoma is attractive to renters because it is an affordable alternative for people who work in Seattle, just over 30 miles away. Beeson said he expects rents to begin stabilizing next year as more investors lease out homes they couldn’t sell.

In uncertain times, people rent, said Walter David Smith, manager of Belhaven Residential, which owns 315 apartments near downtown Jackson, Miss., the third-best apartment market on our list. The demand for apartments was boosted in Jackson after Hurricane Katrina flooded the coastal areas and forced refugees inland.

The weak housing market is keeping people in leases, Smith said.

“This time last year, we probably had 10% vacancy,” Smith said. “Right now, we’re at full occupancy.”

Eric Thomsen, a 32-year-old computer network analyst who rents a one-bedroom apartment in Jackson for $509 a month, is not eager to commit to anything more than a one-year lease.

“When the economy is unsure, you’re unsure,” Thomsen said. “It’s easier to work your way out of a lease than a mortgage.”

Source: BusinessWeek

Remarks: This article demonstartes how important a good online rental listing service can be for a lcoal community. This article also shows evidence of a growing industry for AllStudentRentals.com. We are excited to launch into new markets and help students find housing easier.

August 21st, 2008 by AllStudentRentals.com

Although the spring semester is still young, the time is fast approaching for students to set up their housing arrangements for next year. Some of you reading this are committed to staying on campus, but let me introduce you to the benefits of getting out of the dorms.
As you may be able to tell from the title, most of my argument focuses on money. There’s no way around it; living on campus is expensive. After factoring in rate increases, the average room is likely to cost nearly $6,000 next year and the average meal plan well over $4,000, for a grand total of more than $10,000. Conceivably, you can halve that cost by going off-campus.

Let me start with room costs. Troy is not New York City. You can find great apartments to rent in this city for about $300 a month for a multiple-person apartment, excluding utilities. Speaking of which, utilities aren’t bad either, at $75 to $100 a month. Rent at $375 a month, for 12 months, comes out to $4,500 on the year. That’s roughly $1,500 dollars that you keep, but that’s not all. Yes, you will probably have to pay for the whole year, but then you have a place to stay in the area for the summer, and you can move in and out on your own schedule.

In renting, however, there are a few things you need to watch out for. You will need to make sure that your landlord is reputable, and ensure that you understand all of the terms of a lease before you sign it. I can’t stress this part enough.

Food is even more of a steal. Once you get set up with pots, plates, and utensils, I’ve found that you can eat very well on $600 for the semester, but that number is more subject to your own cooking and eating preferences. Compare that to over $2,000 per semester for a meal plan, and you’re saving almost $3,000. Sure, you do have to buy the food, cook it, and clean up after yourself, but you get to eat the food that you want to eat and you aren’t constrained by the dining hall’s hours.

Of course, with all this newfound financial freedom comes a bit of responsibility. You have to pay the bills, and you have to pay them on time. You have to cook for yourself. But face it, you will most likely be doing these things after college anyway. If college is about challenging yourself and trying new things in and out of the classroom, this is the perfect opportunity. Learn how to cook now before you get out of school. Figure out how to pay bills and balance a checkbook. Take the difficult path for a change instead of the easy way out. We all can’t live with our parents forever. Why not build the skills now while you’re still in the learning environment.

Sources: PolytechnicOnline

Remarks: This article was great because it shows how living off campus really can save you money. From the housing cost and food you can save thousands every year by simply getting your own place.

August 21st, 2008 by AllStudentRentals.com

The most popular place to live as a beginning college student these days is the campus itself, but it might soon become the hotel next door.

Student housing is maxed out at universities across the state as enrollments continue to grow and students stay on campus. The growth could be attributed in part to the state’s lottery scholarship, which some administrators say has changed college from an ambition to an expectation of many Tennessee students.

“The seniors that graduated high school this year, they’ve grown up with the promise of a lottery scholarship,” said Chuck Cantrell, assistant vice chancellor at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. About 35 UTC students are starting school this week from a nearby hotel after the school overran its 2,800-bed capacity.

“The move from a society that doesn’t necessarily see college as an option to a society that sees college as an option and follows through, that takes time,” Cantrell said. “We’re all going to have to learn to deal with those changes and see what they are.”

The increased numbers are forcing colleges to build more dorms, but they’re not going up fast enough to meet demand. About 80 students at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville will be camping out at the Country Hearth Inn & Suites after the school demolished two old dorms with a combined 230-student capacity to build a bigger residence hall.

“Last year we were close, but didn’t have to put anybody in the hotels,” spokeswoman Monica Greppin said. “If we didn’t have [the demolition] happening, we wouldn’t have to.”

The school will place a resident assistant and a hall director at the hotel, and will send shuttle buses for the three-mile commute to campus, Greppin said. The school hopes to move the students out and into dorms when others with housing change their plans or don’t show up.

Reasons for the housing crunch vary, from increasing enrollment to high gas prices, combined with typical desires to be closer to the center of campus life.

“I wanted the full experience of college,” said Heather Entsminger, a sophomore at Belmont University who chose to live on campus instead of commute from Brentwood. “I know if I lived at home I wouldn’t really get away from my parents and my tendency to be non-independent. It got me involved.”

A new, 190-student dorm at Belmont is full, and a freshmen women’s hall will have three beds per room instead of its usual two, a move the school has employed before.

“If you look at the demographics, we were supposed to be in the beginning of a downward roll at most colleges and universities,” said Anthony Donovan, residence life director at Belmont. Colleges have been anticipating slower enrollment growth based on smaller high school classes.

Some schools are victims of their own rules: Lipscomb University requires most non-senior undergraduate students to stay on campus, which has helped keep the school’s housing capacity around 96 percent.

Those rules usually cause freedom-starved seniors to bolt for apartments and houses, but more campus activities and a new, 160-bed apartment complex have kept more on campus, said Sam Smith, Lipscomb’s housing director.

Many Tennessee schools won’t have immediate solutions should the growing housing demand continue. UTC just expanded its housing in 2004, and Tennessee Tech’s new 340-student residence hall is scheduled to open in 2010.

Belmont plans to build two more dorms, and Cumberland University in Lebanon, a self-described commuter school, is looking at building a 200-student residence hall after the school had to stop accepting applications for men’s dorms.

If there’s a silver lining to the overcrowding, hotels might be able to provide it. You don’t typically see swimming pools outside freshman dorm rooms.

“Man, when I was in college, I would have loved to live in a hotel,” Cantrell said. “They have room service once a week — that’s more than I had in my dorm room.”

Source: Tennesseean

Remarks: Another article written over this past week about housing shortages. Our goal at All Student Rentals is to provide students across the nation with local housing in their area. This is yet another school that we believe would benefit from our service!

August 20th, 2008 by AllStudentRentals.com

Unexpectedly high freshman enrollment, housing volatility, and high gas prices have led to a shortage of dorm space at colleges across the country, forcing some schools to pack dorm rooms to the brim and others to set up makeshift living spaces in nearby hotels.

Among the dozens of schools dealing with housing shortages, the University of Massachusetts-Lowell appears to be one of the hardest hit. Dean of Students Larry Siegel says the school is planning to place about 250 students in a hotel about 9 miles from campus and 54 more students in nearby apartment complexes. Colorado State University-Pueblo has arranged with two hotels to house more than 200 students, and the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga expects 50 students to start their school year at two downtown hotels.

How the Lowell campus got to where it is involves “a convergence of events,” as Siegel puts it, that pretty much demonstrates what is happening around the country. Like many other schools, Lowell was expecting a mild freshman bump but notthe deluge in applications it got. Siegel was expecting 5 to 7 percent growth in the freshman class: Instead, he got 20 percent. Similarly, Louisiana State University has 400 more students—mostly freshmen—living on campus than last year and has turned students away from on-campus housing for what may be the first time ever, LSU Housing Director Steve Waller said. CSU-Pueblo saw a 60 percent increase in the number of its freshmen, and Indiana University and Eastern Carolina University had record freshmen classes, too.

Another factor is a huge influx of upperclassmen who have requested to live in dorms. Seton Hall has seen 20 percent more upperclassmen return to dorms, a bounce that Housing Director Tara Hart partially attributes to swankier amenities, which is a trend nationwide.

Housing officials partially blame the rush to dorm rooms on an unpredictable housing market. High food and gas prices also are factors. Like Lowell, Florida Atlantic University has traditionally been a commuter school. But this year, the school has 500 people on its housing wait list. That list previously had never topped 190 students. “There used to be a cost savings to living at home,” Lowell’s Siegel said. “Now, if you’re commuting a 20 miles a day, that just isn’t the case.”

Not all schools have turned to hotels. Adelphi University is offering $2,000 incentives for students to drop their housing contracts, and schools like IU and SUNY-Stony Brook are jamming rooms and even dorm lounges with three or four people. Some schools, including Seton Hall and LSU, are offering advice and counseling for students entering the off-campus housing market.

Life for students banished to the outskirts of campus might not turn out to be so bad. Most of the students will be commuting 20-plus minutes by bus or car to class, but they have been offered special amenities by the universities and hotels. CSU-Pueblo students, for example, will get weekly linen changes, daily trash disposal, continental breakfast, and access to exercise equipment and swimming pools, according to CSU. Lowell students can expect similar perks, including the hotel’s not-too-shabby full-size beds and fancy TVs.

What about next fall? This year’s freshmen class will likely be the largest to come through the system—”a baby boomlet,” as Hart describes it—and enrollment is expected to decrease for a while. New dorms are shooting up left and right, and some schools like Seton Hall plan to rejigger their housing application process. Everyone is already planning for fall 2009—and hoping their enrollment predictive models do a better job.

Source: USnews.com

Remarks: This is great news for AllStudentRentals.com because it helps demonstrate the need for our services. Our goal is to partner with Universities and offer students off-campus housing options. I’ll bet if we worked with the schools mentioned above and had an off-campus housing website setup for them already, they would not be scambling as much.

August 19th, 2008 by AllStudentRentals.com

AllStudentRentals.com has been in development for over a year and we are finally ready to launch. In upcoming years we expect to grow exponentially. AllStudentRentals.com is one of the newer players on the scene but definitely not one to overlook. Our website is packed with features, search options, images, and an easy to use interface. We boast the most advanced and user friendly online rental resource available today.