We sat down with Reagan Amy at Campus Village Apartments at Kettering University and asked her a few questions about her experience with RateMyStudentRental.com as a property manager/landlord.  Check out the videos below!

Name One Thing You Like Most About RateMyStudentRental.com

What is Your Most Useful Tool on RateMyStudentRental.com

How does RateMyStudentRental.com Help with your Daily Job?

Here is an enthusiastic review from one of our student users that we’d like to share with everyone! We love the students, with out you our site would be pretty lame and useless!

Just wanted to thank you for making this site. Me and my friends used
it this term to look for a house at Kettering. We found 625 Dupont on
here but were a little nervous when there were no pictures and one of
the reviews including saying there is a kegorator. The reviews were
really high though. Well after looking at a few other prospects we
decided to give this one a try anyway. We are so glad we did! The house
is in amazing condition and the landlord is extremely easy to work
with. I know we wouldn’t have found this house without your site! Thank
you so much with helping us out!

-jg32189

We’ve barely seen any snow on the ground and I am already asking you to think spring! It’s about that time to start thinking about housing for your next lease.  Especially for B-Section Kettering University students who are starting to think about housing for the spring term (April-June).  RateMystudentRental.com has some amazingly helpful tools for student’s and landlords as the fall term quickly comes to and end.

Students

Maybe your fall housing arrangements were temporary while you waited for your dear friends to return from their study abroad term, or maybe you were abroad yourself!  Or, maybe you just can’t stand your roommates anymore, or you’ve just had it with who-knows-what in the apartments or in the house.  Whatever the case is, RateMyStudentRental.com’s comprehensive database of rental’s is here to save you during the search.  Check us out to search for housing around campus and sort through your options by evaluating the ratings and reviews left by other students.  While you are there, rate your current (and past) rental(s) so that other students can benefit the same way you are benefiting from their ratings.

Tips For Students Looking For Housing:

• Cut your search time in half by looking for rentals who have been flagged as available or sublet needed.  To find rentals that have been flagged as available/sublet you can search the home page to see recent availabilities or you can use the search box. When using the search box, type in your school and select the “with room availabilities only” function.
• Create a Student Watch List (must be logged in as a student to view).  Let us know what your ideal student rental is by filling out the student watch list form.  When a rental is flagged as available that matches your criteria, we’ll alert you and you can contact the student or landlord who flagged the rental to make arrangements to move in.

If you are looking for a replacement roommate or you are finding someone to replace your spot in a rental you can flag a rental as sublet needed.  This will alert prospective students that you are looking for someone to fill a room or two in your current rental.  Instead of the prospective roommate contact the landlord directly, they can contact you.

Landlords

It’s really never too early to start seeking out student tenants for the upcoming term.  A survey conducted by Alfa Jango Software and Marketing helps RateMyStudentRental.com determine when student start looking for their next housing arrangements.  We asked students “How long before you need to move in, do you start looking for your next student housing arrangements?” Here are the results:

With those results, it’s clear to see right now is the prime time to start seeking out your tenants.  Reaching out to students can be difficult, but RateMyStudentRental.com has a feature that makes this necessary challenge, possible.  The Flag For Availability feature not only tells students you have available rooms but it also alerts students who have a Student Watch List created if your rental matches their criteria (number of rooms, rent price, distance from campus…etc).

Tips When Using The Flag For Availability:

• If you are a landlord at a school that has rotating semesters/quarters (like Kettering University who rotates students every 3 months) this tip is for you. If you have available rooms for both sections/terms, purchase the longest Flag - Next term, which stays active for 5 months.  You can use the description box in the flag to tell students how many rooms are avaiable during each term (and you can change this description as often as you would like during the life of the flag).

To all, good luck with house hunting and finishing and starting your next term.  Don’t forget to rate your work term housing too, we do that!  As always, contact us with any questions or comments.  We’re always looking for the next best way to make your life easier when it comes to student housing.

Blake just wrote an excellent article called “A Safe Home is a Happy Home (well, it helps anyway)” with some very insightful tips on not getting your stuff stolen. His post mentions that Flint is consistently in the top 5 most dangerous cities in the US. Now, to be fair, there are some that say you should take these rankings with a grain of salt. But, as Blake’s article mentions, we have seen many of our friends get their stuff stolen, so I thought I’d tell a couple funny (in a tragic sense) stories of our friends who found themselves no longer in possession of their possessions.

The Opposite of a Parting Gift: the Parting Take-Away

I have this one buddy, whose name escapes me at the moment, who decided after a year of going to school in Flint, that it wasn’t for him anymore. He had just been accepted into another school elsewhere that started a few weeks after Kettering’s semester. So a few weeks in, he packed up his stuff, ready to move out Sunday, but decided to first have one last hurrah Friday and Saturday night. It was like his last week of break all over again. But this was something more. It was like “no worries” partying coupled with a “screw you, Flint” attitude.

Unfortunately, he didn’t plan on Flint answering right back to the screw you part. When he got back from partying Friday night, he found that his house had been broken into. His desktop computer, which he had all nicely packed and stacked, was gone, along with his guitar. He had unwittingly done half the burglar’s job and made everything he owned easy to haul out of the window and back to the thief’s evil lair (that’s how I imagine thieves to be, don’t you?).

Needless to say, his attitude for Saturday’s night of debauchery had changed from “screw you, Flint” to “drown my sorrows in alcohol.” Tough break, but such is the stigma of Flint.

At least the Thief Smells Good

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what was going through someone’s head… I have another really good friend, Jim, who had an interesting experience getting his house broken into one night.

It’s not hard to imagine the panic that goes through one’s mind and takes control of your senses when you come home to realize that your sanctuary has been broken into. But try to imagine the confusion when you are filing the police report, and giving answers like this:

Police: Sir, what is the most valuable item missing from the house?

Jim: Um, that would be the Xbox (aside: this is pre-Xbox 360 era)

Police: No laptops, computers, or jewelry were stolen?

Jim: No sir, all of that is still there.

Police: Was anything else stolen?

Jim: Yes… my deodorant.

Police: I’m sorry?

Jim: My Old Spice deodorant was stolen.

Police: Um, are you sure you didn’t just misplace it?

Jim: Yes, and you can definitely tell the burglar was in the bathroom. He stole my deodorant.

Police: And what was the value of this deodorant?

Jim: Well, it was less than half used. Probably $2 I guess…

Looking at the bright side though, at least the burglar would smell good for when he invited his hot date over to his evil lair to play his new Xbox. Only in Flint.