<p>Some advice on apartments: </p>
<p>-Avoid "student" complexes if you can. I'm referring to the type of pre-packaged, furnished places which offer individual room leases. They frequently seem like an attractive deal because they are all-inclusive (though many will charge a premium on electricity) and feature amenities that college students tend to find attractive (pools, tanning beds, gyms etc). However, be advised that these are (in practice) much like dorms, minus the RA, on-campus convenience and the responsible university ownership/supervision. There's a reason why people tend to prefer the newer complexes: that's because they haven't been destroyed yet. The office staff is largely disinterested or incompetent (staffed mainly by students looking for free rent) and you can expect parties and rude neighbors. Finally, individual leases means that you're at the mercy of apartment management as far as roommates are concerned (don't buy the hype about "roommate matching" - they're no better than university housing in that regard, and frequently worse - I only got lucky because my friend and I were so fanatical about our matching forms that we were saved by the grace of a grad student complex employee who was looking for responsible roommates). The only way around that is to bring in a full set of co-signing roommates, but that partially defeats the purpose of having individual leases in the first place.</p>
<p>Read my review on Seminole Suites (a typical student complex) here: Opinion</a> of Seminole Suites on Jackson Bluff Road posted 6/18/2006: Gets worse with each passing day.
Other popular examples include Boardwalk, Osceola Ridge, The Exchange, Frog Pond (Frog Pond is probably the worst of all), Jefferson Commons, etc.</p>
<p>One other small (but seldom mentioned) downside: the shared ethernet/internet in those complexes basically sucks. There were times I had to go to the university library to use the various online databases (or even to access my BB account) simply because the complex internet was too slow or down altogether.</p>
<p>The typical undergraduate living transition looks like this:
Year 1 - dorm or student apartment
Year 2 - dorm or student apartment
Year 3 - student apartment or non-student apartment
Year 4 - non-student apartment or house</p>
<p>See the trend? Why not save your daughter the headache and skip right to point C? You'll all be happier for it.</p>
<p>-You might think that student-oriented housing will be cheaper because it caters to students (and because it's so subpar), but you'd be wrong. They actually charge a hefty premium for convenience, as you might expect. For example, I paid $475 per month to rent my share of a 4 BR/4 BA 1800 sq ft apartment in SS. All told, that means we were collectively paying a whopping $1900 per month (including utilities, but still!) for a mediocre living arrangement. The Exchange was similar but (unlike SS) did NOT include electricity. For the sake of contrast, you can usually can find a decent 3 bedroom house of a similar size or slightly smaller for $1000-1100 per month plus utilities (typically around 150-200 with cable internet).</p>
<p>-Neighborhood is key. Again, avoid student areas. Look where the young professionals are living (hint: Park, Magnolia, Meridian, Miccosukee, St. Augustine and Thomasville are good places to start).</p>
<p>-Signing a single lease with some friends is often the way to go. This way, the apartment complex or landlord can't split you up or move somebody into your place without your consent. The management at The Exchange gifted my friends and I with a lone random during the spring of my freshman year (I spent summer and fall in the dorms) who brought ten or eleven of his closest friends with him and turned out to be one of Tallahassee's biggest drug dealers (there was a police raid on the apt. a few weeks after I left for the summer). Of course, our eviction/transfer demands went entirely ignored.</p>
<p>EDIT: I didn't realize that University Heights is (what used to be) The Exchange (as mentioned above). You probably ought to stay away!</p>
<p>Hey - you live and you learn. But if you're willing to learn from my mistakes (and experiences), all the better! By my senior year, I was renting a 3BR townhouse with two of my closest friends (who I'd already lived with before, so we were compatible roommates) in a fantastic neighborhood near Blair Stone/Miccosukee and enjoyed every moment of it - all for just $330/mth (my share) plus utilities (usually no more than $40 after splitting!). If I had to suffer through two years of student apartment living to get there, so be it.</p>