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.

Alright, we are not talking about identity theft per say because we don’t need your social security number or your mama’s maiden name for you to rate your rental.  But, we have taken our users right to anonymity one step further.  As a student you can be sure you can keep a low profile but still accomplish what RateMyStudentRental.com has to offer.

When you create your account you can choose whatever username you desire.  This username will appear on your rental reviews and will be how other users view your activity on the site.

TIP: If you want to keep a low profile pick a username that does not incorporate your first or last name, your school email address, or other terms descriptive of your real identity.

Situation 1:

When you contact a landlord your real name will appear as the contact. We’ve chosen to do this because chances are when you contact a landlord, whether to inquire about an available room or to submit a maintenance request, eventually you are going to disclose your  real name - and when that time comes, we don’t want your reviews (linked to your username) to be revealed to the landlord.

Situation 2:

When Landlords make the first contact to you they will only know/see your username, allowing you to reveal your identity at your discretion (or as we recommend, not at all).  Even when you reply to a thread that was started by a landlord your real name will NOT be displayed unless you type it in the body of the message.

We’re taking every measure we can to keep the identity of your review completely separate from the business you can conduct through RateMyStudentRental.com, while managing both identities under one account.

So, you may still be asking why it is important to keep your username and real identity separate?  It’s simple, at least we think so!  We don’t want students to feel any pressure to hold back the truth about a shoddy rental for fear of being bullied by a landlord or singled out.

If you have comments or suggestions on how we can do an even better job with this issue, please contact us and we’ll be happy to hear your thoughts.

Spoiler Alert: A friend on Facebook for whom you’ve restricted access to your tagged Photos can view all of your tagged photos that have comments on them that were uploaded by you in albums that don’t also explicitly restrict access, despite what Facebook’s help dialog states.

Bonus: They can also see some of your Photo Albums from the new Facebook iPhone App (version 2.0). Be sure to set the privacy settings for each album you’ve uploaded to restrict access to your Limited Profile friend list.

We don’t normally write posts for this kind of thing, but I figured this information is important to anyone trying to keep a professional face on your Facebook presence for family and business contacts.

When setting up your Limited Profile, it is often the case that you want to restrict access to tagged photos of yourself. Of course it’s only natural that you’d want to keep Mom and Dad (who now use Facebook to stay in contact with you) from seeing that night (or girl) you don’t remember. Or maybe you don’t want an employer to see why you’re so tired every morning. Be warned, these privacy settings might not be as far-reaching as you think.

The screenshots below were taken while logged into my own account, but I was able to duplicate these steps while logged in as a friend who I had added to my Limited Profile. Someone on your Limited Profile can see all your tagged photos with comments in the following way:

1. Click on your Profile picture to view your Profile Pictures Album.
   

   Profile Photo Album

2. Click “View Comments” to view all of your profile pictures with comments.
   

   Profile Photo Comments

3. Click “See All Photo Comments” to see all of your tagged photos with comments.
   

   Photo Comments

That’s right, someone on your Limited Profile, which is set up to restrict access to tagged photos of yourself, can see all of your tagged photos that have comments. And of course, the photos with comments are going to be the most outrageous ones… that’s why they have comments.

My Privacy Settings

Did I miss something here? I highly suggest adding a close friend to your Limited Profile and asking them to let you take your profile for a spin from their account to make sure everything is in order.

Update:

I added a few more people to my Limited Profile to get more verification, and my buddy (Joe Minock over at WhatUNeedLocal) just found that once you do Step 3, you can then click “Back to Steve’s Photos” and see ALL of my tagged photos on Facebook. I repeat, Joe, who is restricted from seeing my photos, can see ALL of my photos on Facebook. see all tagged photos of me that are in my own photo albums if the album isn’t specifically set to restrict access to the Limited Profile.

Update 2:

This is apparently not a flaw in programming, but a flaw in the copy of the Privacy Settings description for tagged photos. Facebook says:

Tagged Photos

Use this control to decide who can see the list of photos of you that you or your friends have tagged.

Despite what Facebook says, however, this does not include photos in which you’ve been tagged that are in your own albums that don’t explicitly also restrict access to the Limited Profile in the album’s privacy settings.

Today we pushed a once premium service to a free service under the landlords rental services at www.RateMyStudentRental.com. The rental description, which was originally a premium service, is now a free service for all landlords.

The rental description allows landlords to write a description for their rental which appears on the rental’s profile for all to see.  Landlords can edit the rental description as often as needed. Adding a rental description will provide students with unique information that will help them make their next student housing selections.

Some different ideas of topics to include in a rental description include:

• Share some of the unique characteristics of the rental.
• Discuss further detail about rent prices, utilities, or policies.
• Elaborate on the location or area, including nearby hot spots.

How to create a rental description (must be a RateMyStudentRental.com landlord, click here to see how to become a landlord):

• Log into www.ratemystudentrental.com with your landlord username and password.
• Click the ‘rental services’ tab
• Find and select ‘rental description’
• Write your description and submit
• Repeat the same process to edit or change your rental description

Compose your rental description today, now for free.  This will not only educate current and prospective students about the rental and your services but it will also optimize your rental’s profile in search engines like, Google, when students search for student housing on your campus.

This is a rental description from one of our current landlords rentals. You can see where and how it shows up on the profile.

If you are a landlord registered at RateMyStudentRental.com you may wonder where these “credits” came from, how you got them, and what do you do with them! I would like to take this opportunity to answer those questions and more. If you still have questions at the end of this blog about credits please contact us or leave a comment on this blog and we’ll answer your question for you!

What is a credit?

Credits are issued to landlords for certain activity on RateMyStudentRental.com . The credits can be earned, purchased and redeemed towards premium service purchases to enhance and build a rental’s profile and grow your business.

Why credits?

We moved to a credit based system for you (the landlords) to reward you for activity on the site and provide additional incentive to use the premium services that are provided. If you want a premium service, you may have to purchase additional credits from time to time.

What is a credit worth?

One (1) credit equals $1 on RateMyStudentRental.com only. Unfortunately, credits can not be “cashed out”.

How do I earn credits?

There are several ways you can earn credits:

• Registering as a Landlord: The first time that you register on RateMyStudentRental.com you will immediately receive credits.
• Adding rentals to your account: If you have multiple rentals you can enter in the confirmation or invitation code to link all of your rentals under one user name. Each rental you add to your main account will add to your collection of credits.
• Referring a new student: To give landlords incentive to encourage their past or current students to rate the property we’ll issue credits when a landlord refers a student. The only way to make sure you get the credits is to ask the student to select ‘my landlord’ when asked ‘How did you hear about us’
  during the registration process. The first rental that a new student rates, receives the credits. So make sure you ask the student to rate your property first!
• Student Reviews: For each student review you will be given credits based off of the score; a 4 star review equals 4 credits, a 3 star review equals 3 credits, etc.

Please log in and check your Landlord Home Page for most accurate and updated information.

How do I use my credits?

You can learn about the premium services under the ‘rental services’ tab on your Landlord Home Page . Here you will find a description of the service and the cost. To redeem your credits for the selected premium services, select add to profile. If you have enough credits everything will be taken care of in this step. If you need to acquire more credits you can purchase more by clicking the ‘buy credits’ button on the left hand side of your Landlord Home Page , or you will be given the option to buy more credits when you try to add the premium service to your profile.

Why should I use my credits?

You should use your credits, well, because they are there. And, using premium services will help you fill room vacancies, provide all the information students need and grow your student rental business. We’ve made earning and redeeming credits as easy as we could so that we are able to give back to landlords who are helping to make RateMyStudentRental.com the Ultimate Student Housing Tool.

If you have any suggestions or questions please do not hesitate to leave feedback on this blog topic or contact us

Hi, I’m Steve, the developer guy for RateMyStudentRental.com. Most of the articles you’ll see coming from me on this blog will be talking about cool new features and ways to use the site. Now despite the fact that this site is pretty much the coolest thing to happen to student rentals since the invention of the beer-pong table, some people still need a little nudge in the right direction to try it out. So, I’ve put together this handy video to show you what we’re all about.

Now, if that doesn’t get you excited and wanting to tell your current landlord where to go, just so you can use our site to find your next place, then maybe this video, put together by an enthusiastic student user, will.