News’ Advice for Renters
The News’ “M Issue” is full of advice for students looking to rent off-campus housing. For example, it’s time to debunk that pernicious myth, spread by students and valiantly fought by landlords, that it’s necessary to look for fall housing almost a year in advance. There are still places for rent in July! And if something’s wrong with your apartment, don’t withhold rent. Student renters are notoriously hardnosed about insisting that every aspect of a place is up to snuff, and it would be too bad if any landlords had to suffer.
But what could possibly be wrong with any of the beautiful rental houses in A2? The News mentions two possibilities for illegal accommodations: a house with more than six bedrooms intended for more than six tenants, and a house that has a bedroom in the basement. Hmm, strange that both of these have more to do with the density than the condition of the house. Well, anyhow, happy hunting!
Well, that is a pernicious myth– when I transferred here during undergrad I was pressured by my peers into finding a place for the next year within a couple months after moving to town, and ended up with some incredibly-overpriced joint ($525/mo. per person in a 4-bedroom! apt.) on Packard. Note that all the incoming grad students who aren’t admitted until spring always find (often better & cheaper) housing just fine. Now I’m in a better house in a better neighborhood for far cheaper (and a mere 10-minute walk to Central Campus). I know there’s a lot of skeezy landlords indeed, but students are also pretty stupid about house-hunting.
posted by Brandon on September 1st, 2005 at 12:25 pmI imagine the bedroom in the basement is a fire code thing, which does not allow bedrooms in basements unless there is adequate egress in case of fire.
posted by tom on September 1st, 2005 at 12:37 pmI’m sure there’s a good reason for the no bedrooms in basements thing, but it seemed like a strange thing to mention when there are so many other violations.
The incoming grad students may seem to do fine with housing (although I had to resort to a horrible, overpriced dump that I found through a friend of a friend my first year) but I’m not sure their experiences correspond to the undergrads’. I suspect that certain landlords are very choosy about who they rent to; I was turned away from one cheap, beautiful place and I’m pretty sure it was because I was a grad student (long story - the landlord decided he didn’t want the faculty member renting the house to have a roommate when I was the potential roommate, but it was suddenly okay when the potential roommate was a non-student. And he was pretty upfront about telling me how he charged lower rent so he could be picky about his tenants.) It’s probably even worse for undergrads. Not to mention that undergrads are more limited in their location because they can’t get parking passes.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 1st, 2005 at 3:48 pmYou can have a bedroom in the basement if you get the windows to be modified into egress windows (no more than about 3 1/2 feet above the floor, window wide and tall enough for an adult to get out of, and steps to then get from the window well to the ground above). Unfortunately, it costs about $5,000 per window to do this.
My father-in-law in NYC did the same low rent thing for his long-term tenants, where he charged a way below market rate ($450/m for 3 bedrooms in Queens near the F train) to keep the tenants he had because he was comfortable with them. I also have an acquaintance that owns several condos in Ann Arbor for rental income. He does not rent to undergraduate students and chooses his properties to be located in Ann Arbor’s “outer ring” to avoid being near other student renter properties.
posted by JCP2 on September 1st, 2005 at 11:52 pmAnn Arbor.
Help me organize information for Katrina victims.
This is a web savvy group. If you have time, please help me. You can help by making this message your own and forwarding it everyone you know. Have them contact me directly at alan@engrm.com .
I can’t check this forum, so email me directly with questions. Someone tell Ypsi~Dixit.
http://thinknola.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page#Mission_Statement
posted by Alan Gutierrez on September 2nd, 2005 at 11:45 amThat last part was the link I want you all to follow.
Thank you very much.
posted by Alan Gutierrez on September 2nd, 2005 at 11:46 amWill do, Alan. Hope all your family and friends down there are OK.
posted by Nick on September 2nd, 2005 at 10:02 pmHuh, and to think, I was wondering why the return rate of upperclassmen in the dorms was rising so steeply. Shocking that anyone would want to stay in the dorms instead of bothering to deal with the landlords and housing conditions offcampus, really.
posted by Boston Fan in Michigan on September 6th, 2005 at 5:11 pmIt seems to me that one of the failures in the article’s assertion that “just-fine housing is still available in summer” is an economic one: it assumes that the housing available in summer has equal value to the resident as the housing she is already living in and wouldn’t have to move for.
When I was renting a couple of years ago, my landlords sent a letter six weeks after we moved in stating that they would start to advertise the property for the following year’s lease (10 months away) on November 1. If you don’t want to move every year, you don’t have much choice when they do something like that.
Landlords say they don’t want to start showing places in the fall, which we all know is baloney. If they didn’t want to start so early, all they would have to do is … refuse to rent until spring. Students can’t rent what isn’t available. Problem solved.
posted by mandolinjen on September 9th, 2005 at 9:26 am