Last night I went up to Kettering University to assist with the Resident Assistants at Thompson Hall in an open discussion with freshman.  Our discussion covered topics related to off-campus life, how to find the right housing, what to expect and how to have a great and safe time!  The evening was fun and informational.  Overall the presentation was very similar to our February meeting which was re-capped in this blog post.

The students asked great questions, like:

Q: Will I have to sign an individual lease or will I have to sign a group lease and be accountable for my roommates actions?

My A: Of course this will vary from landlord to landlord and each lease is different so read carefully.  Some landlords do allow for individual leases to be singed, most have one lease the entire group signs.  Ultimately do your best to pick responsible roommates and respect the property.  If you have an issue with the way a landlord is handling his or her lease speak up.  From our experience many landlords are open to suggestions and with reasonable requests they will be accommodating to your needs or concerns.

And, a small tip, as a group do your best to build a relationship with the landlord through communication and respect.  When you promptly alert the landlords of issues with the house, pay rent on time, and are friendly, it makes getting that security deposit back at the end of the term/year a lot easier.

(That was a little bit longer that my real answer last night)

Q:  When landlords make major improvements to the house because of the responses left on RateMyStudentRental.com, does the rent increase as well?

My A: We have not seen that pattern of increasing rent due to major renovations or as a response to student comments on the website.  From my observations, the landlords are in a very competitive mode right now.  The good landlords, who care about their business and the students are working hard and investing in their properties to make a students experience more enjoyable and comfortable.  If they can provide housing that all the students want and they can achieve full capacity the landlords achieve their ROI most definitely.

Other tips for students in their search for housing…utilize the Student Watch List.  The student watch list is located on your home page when you log in as a student.  Here students can fill out a pretty simple form defining their needs for housing.  After it’s submitted if a rental becomes available that meets the needs of that student, an automated message is sent out alerting the student of the available rooms.  From that message students can communicate with landlords right on RateMyStudentRental.com to inquire about the available rooms.  We’re trying to make this process as simple as possible for students, landlords, and school officials.

If you are or your group is holding a meeting with students to discuss off-campus living, or how to search for housing or any other housing related meeting, the RateMyStudentRental.com team would be happy to join forces and share our knowledge with students.

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

In my earlier blog Out of the Dorms and Into Life (A Guide to Finding the Best Place to Live in College) I identified six steps to finding college housing that works for you and your lifestyle.

• Start Counting Your Benjamins!
• What Are Your Gotta-Have-Its?
• Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live With-Out Them! (Roommates)
• So, Which Place Should I Choose?
• Commit Already!
• Live It Up!

Over the next few months I will be adding a new blog that talks a little more about each step so you can get a better understanding of the step.

Start Counting Your Benjamins!

Originally I wrote:

First, and most important to most students, is the cost of the rent. Hopefully as a student you have some sort of budget in mind for the next 4-5 years of your college career. Finding a place that is within your budget should not be too hard. Also, keep in mind that the theory that “you get what you pay for” isn’t always true with student housing; we’ll get into that a little later.

Creating Your Budget & Managing Your Money

Now that you are a college student chances are you are fully enjoying the college experience which consists of more play and less work (after all your homework is done of course)! So, how do we have fun playing with out worry And, if you are working, super – this gives you more reason to manage your money, because you have more to manage.

Establishing a budget is pretty easy, it’s the part where you have to follow your budget that requires a little more self-discipline. Start off by determining your income and expenses.

It is easiest to break down your income and expenses on a month to month basis. Income is fairly easy to identify, since the main source is usually from a job, either full or part time.

Predicting your expenses should take a little thought and effort. For most accurate budgets, look at the last few months of your expenses, how much did you spend on the following activities/items (just to name a few):

• Tuition
• Rent
• Utilities: phone, internet
• Auto: gas, insurance, service
• Groceries
• Dining
• “going out”
• Entertainment:movies, sports
• Shopping: clothing, gadgets
• Emergency money!

Once you have identified and categorized some of your expenses you should prioritize them. What expenses can and should you try to trim? Which expenses are critical to your survival; like entertainment, no one likes to be bored! Just kidding, more like the food and shelter, those play a huge factor in your success in the classroom.

After you are comfortable with your priority and estimates for income and expenses you can compare the two.

Income & Expenses = +/-

If you are in the negative, maybe you should play with your numbers a bit until they look reasonable and calculate to be closer to a positive number, or at least zero!

When your budget looks like it works for you, pay attention to what you allocated for your housing or rent. Rental prices range across the country, ask around and do a little research on campus to find the averages of student housing, you can also use RateMyStudentRental (yeah, another plus, can you blame me, it’s a sweet site!) to filter rental results on your campus by price and check out the ratings and review from other students, is there any correlation between price and quality on your campus? Watch out for the great deals and landlords who have great reviews, a great rental, and an affordable monthly rent.

Using tools like Wasabe (who have a reputation for holding true to their Privacy Policy can help manage your budget and personal finances.

Being smart with your money is important. Keep the following tips in mind about how to spend your money:

• Try to avoid using credit cards.
• If you must use a credit card, pay it off each bill cycle.
• Have your weekly spending allowance in cash and only spend that…when it’s gone, even it is Wednesday…wait until Monday to get more cash.
• Pay bills (cell phone, rent, credit card) as soon as the statement comes out so that you are not tempted to spend the money else where.

Reviewing your budget:

If you took the time to put a budget together than you are one step ahead of most. You budget will be most effective if you can stick to it and review how well you are doing. I use Quicken software and each month I input all of my expenses and categorize them (food, auto, clothing, entertainment….etc). Quicken lets you run reports and see how much you have in each category and it also reports income. You can see many different reports and graphs of your financials. This is a good monthly review, compare it to your budget and see where you need to or can reduce or increase spending.

And, I would be doing my Financial Markets Professor wrong if I didn’t encourage you to put a little bit of money away into investments now. Whether stock markets (short term and risky) or mutual funds (long term and less risky), we are young as students and can benefit greatly by getting in the habit of investing now.

Happy Budgeting!