<p>My daughter is a freshman at Virginia Tech and she has begun looking for off campus housing for next year. Does anyone have any recommendations?</p>
<p>All of my experience is about three years old by now so keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Does she have roommates lined up already? That’s the first thing to nail down since if you find a place first you might not be able to find roommates to match it, while if a group of four people start looking together they can usually find something they agree on.</p>
<p>There are two main routes to go. The first is the big apartment complexes. Out of those the only one I’d absolutely not recommend is The Mill (bad location. Not like unsafe bad but far away bad. And the apartment I toured wasn’t very nice) and I’d caution against The Village. Now, the Village isn’t really much worse than the rest of them I don’t think, but I lived there so I got to experience it first hand. It always seemed like the other apartments were nicer for the same price, and there were a ton of issues with management that I can go into if you’re interested but short version is ‘they know you’re students and that they can do whatever they want to you.’ The good thing about the Village is that the leases are separate, so if one roommate can’t make rent the others aren’t effected. Unless they keep missing rent and get replaced with a random, which can happen.</p>
<p>The other complexes I may be able to tell you a little about if there’s a specific one. Foxridge seemed nice but is a little distance from campus (although there is apparently a walking trail.) As far as I know all the major complexes have BBTransit service but she can check a service map to see how much and all that. If you want an apartment in a complex you’re looking at pretty much the right time.</p>
<p>If you’re willing to put a little more work into it, though, you can get a better deal on a nicer place by renting a house or townhome. The somewhat maddening part of this is that you’ll have to wait till basically summer to start looking since that’s when the places become available and they fill pretty quickly. You’ll have to do more homework regarding utilities, bus routes, checking the condition, etc. People I know that have gone this route have ended up happier in general with the value they get.</p>
<p>Be aware that wherever you go you’ll probably be stuck with a 12 month lease, so you’ll be paying for the apartment over the summer whether you live there or not. Figure out now who’s going to be paying what if, say, two roommates move out and two stay over the summer. Rent and utilities. I’ve seen people get nasty if not everyone is going to be staying. I do suggest staying if you can get an internship in the area though (Roanoke included,) Blacksburg is nice in the summer. If you have AC.</p>