In my area, apartment searches start February to April (although you’re grasping for single placements for the popular places of you wait that long). Around March some apartment roll out their deals. Groups who want to live together generally go in early so they can guarantee their placement.
Subleasing starts in January and continues all throughout the summer. Around the end of April through May there are significant price drops. An apartment you might be paying $675 a month for could be $550 a month or even have the first month’s rent paid for! People get desperate.
At the school my sons attend, housing is not guaranteed for upper classman so many freshmen start looking in October for their sophomore year. The apartments that are in walkiing distance go first, so by December there are not many rooms left in these. However, if one doesn’t mind commuting, one can find an apartment probably up to July before schools starts. Since I wanted my kids to be on campus for their second year, we took the chance and did not start looking right away. However, as upperclassmen, they had to “opt in” to show their interest in dorm rooms in December or early January. Housing takes in account how many rooms freshmen might need, then gives the remaining rooms to sophomore, juniors and seniors (in that order). They then inform the student a week or two later if they were able to stay in dorms or not. They are then given a sign-in date to actually pick rooms (seniors first choice, juniors than sophomores) in mid March. Freshmen choose in early May. Since many upper classman no longer want to live on campus, for the last two years anyways there has been enough rooms available for those who wanted to stay.
Has she been able to find a place for next year yet? It must be really difficult when you are so far away. I know my son and his friends found a house on their own without help but some of them do have cars so it was easier to go look. We did find that we were able to sign the application and co-sign for their apartment by just emailing back and forth. Each roommate’s parent co-signed for just their student- be sure to have her check that any prospective landlord is willing to do that so that you don’t get stuck paying rent for a roommate that ends up moving out. Most of the landlords around campus seem to do that as they are probably used to dealing with students. If she doesn’t already have a way to pay any deposit (most landlords seem to prefer checks). Also have her check to make sure the bus system stops close to wherever she is going to be so she can get back and forth to campus easily. I would have her check the UCSD housing website, off-campus housing link http://commuterlistings.ucsd.edu/ (the “How to look for Housing” tab has a lot of tips) to look for places. My son also used Zillow.com which has a rental search. I think that is how they found their house, but there are also a lot of apartments listed, including some furnished. Good luck- I’m sure she will find something if she can’t get off of the on-campus housing waitlist, but it is certainly more stressful for you!
I wish we could combine the post on the other thread to this thread. But I just want to reply to the last post before the thread was closed.
Parents don’t have to cosign for off campus apartment. I called and the lease manager said as long as they are students at UCSD and put the deposit and one month payment, they are good to go. Currently there are tons of apartment. I have one available for July 22 but my kid and roommates don’t need it into Sep and they don’t have lots of money to pay ahead. So don’t panic.
My daughter missed the deadline to apply for on campus housing at ucsd for next year. She received one email which she did not open. As parents paying $55,000 per year, we did not receive ANY emails notifying us of the deadline. It is May 6 and she has nowhere to live next year. Did I mention we live in Pennsylvania? Yes, they are adults but not very experienced. Stay on top once they get to college!
^^^ it depends on the landlord. In our case the landlord/owner did require co-signers for each renter and I know another friend did have to get one for her apartment only because her Mom called me with questions. Maybe I missed something and you are talking about a specific location. Sorry if I did miss it. In any case, it would be good to start looking now.
post #46, did I read that your son and his roommate rent a private house? The company I talked to own multiple apartment complexes both in San Diego, Orange County and San Jose area.
My D goes to Davis and we live near another UC. In Davis leads run Sept 1- Aug 30. So you end up paying for a summer on the end. In my hometown the leases run July 1 to June 30. The apartments and rentals near campus go the quickest.
Spring break of Freshman yr my D and her roommate hadn’t found an apartment. We drove up and drove a round the area. Most complexes had signs up and staffed rental offices. Some required co-signers where others did not. No rhyme or reason to that. We found a great complex with 1 apartment left and we took it. I would be hesitant to wait. It is just a given that unless you live on campus you will sign a 12 month lease.
Dr. Google- re post# 47- yes, my son and his friends have rented a house off campus. They found it through Zillow. They rented it directly through the owner who has several houses that he rents to students. We did have to put down a security deposit equal to one months rent. It starts July 1 but he will be there much of the summer anyway so it works out OK. There are many diffsrent apartments and houses for rent in LJ, managed by a wide variety of property managers and owners. Each has their own set of rules, but all of the ones my son contacted did require a co-signed.
takeitallin, thanks for your post. I guess different apartments have different set of rules and requirements. I did call around today and they do have short term rental from 4 months to 12 months. The shorter the temporary rental the more they charge. I was told it could be $400-$500 higher per month.
My niece and her friends were able to find a house in Mission Beach for just the time they needed it. They all lived on campus for 2 years, then all went to semester abroad for fall junior year, and had arranged to have the house starting in January. Then the owner took it back for the summer and rented it out, and gave it back to them in September for the school year. They just graduated and had to be out June 1 for the summer season.
Seems to work for the students and the home owners in San Diego.
Just bring this thread up to say my daughter and her roommates got off campus housing approved. Move in early Sep, but it’s a year lease. I didn’t have to cosign or anything, it’s between all the kid’s income. My daughter has summer income and her friends have financial aid. I still see some apartments available before UCSD starts, very close to the school start date.
We have the “read your email” talk all the time with our son. He thinks it’s for our generation, but we constantly remind him that the people he has to deal with for banking, housing, jobs, etc. are of our generation, and we send email! Also, and this is a peeve of mine, it’s really just splitting hairs to suggest that email is different than other typed forms of communication. You still have to, you know, click stuff and use the alphabet to communicate!
Post #54, I agree with you. My kid and her friends have been approved for housing for a while now but she didn’t check whatever email. Today I called the apartment, they refused to give me any info due to privacy, but in the end I got the just that the apartment was approved and told my kid to check with her friends. Sure enough it was there in the mailbox but nobody checked. They were expecting the word approved in the headline and ignore the rest.
I got my housing application done as soon as I was admitted, and paid the first deposit a couple days after the system opened, and I still got waitlisted. Things are incredibly tight at SFSU, to the point where they are trying to double capacity with new construction on unused land the university owns, yet do not expect that doubled capacityto fulfill the demand for housing. I was lucky enough to get a room after a couple weeks on the waitlist, but housing as a whole is pretty inadequate.
For UCSD - there’s a campus shuttle that includes in its route the area near UCSD with a lot of apartments and where many students live - the Regents Rd/Nobel Dr. area. This is free for students and is more convenient to use than driving one’s car even if they have a car - i.e. if one is relatively near one of the campus shuttle stops it’s best to leave the car parked and take the shuttle and use the car to drive to places other than campus. Of course, one can also take a city bus to get around, including further afield, but most students living off-campus in the nearby apartments take the campus shuttle or bike, skateboard, walk to campus.
The apartments in the area near campus have a variety of requirements for co-signing depending on the apartment management company. Some require a co-sign, some don’t require a co-sign as long as the student can produce a bank statement showing x months of rent worth of money in the bank, some will go based on student income, and other permutations.
Many/most of the apartment complexes in that area are pretty nice. Even if a student is guaranteed or somehow gets 4 years of on-campus housing many are ‘ready to try something different’ with regards to living accommodation and are basically tired of the on-campus style and want to live in a non-campus affiliated apartments, eat non-dining hall food, and basically be more independent. In addition, some students end up staying 4.5 or 5 years for a variety of reasons, including changing their major, etc., and need someplace to live.
