<p>curiouser, they do have to learn things don’t they? Some of the things I recall my D. learning were:
-she called us because water had not been getting hot since they moved in. When asked what setting the water heater was on, she was amazed that there were settings and found it was on “vacation”
-learned how to unstop commodes (parents always did at home)
-learned to grocery shop economically and how to use leftovers
-became more comfortable with dealing with repair people
-learned it is a much bigger hassle to lock yourself out with no RA to go to
-learned how to change furnace filters
-became aware of and how to use main water shut off and breaker boxes</p>
<p>First question is what is your daughter’s motivation for getting an apartment?</p>
<p>If she is the type who doesn’t like the noise, crowd, and chaos of dorm living and is a bit of a homebody (wants to study at home instead of library), apartment living is a good thing.</p>
<p>If she is the type who is the source of the noise and chaos of dorm living and having to be told by the RA to tone it down, it is probably a bad idea, because the lack of structure will probably lead to a decline in productive living habits.</p>
<p>If she is in the first group and finds roommates who are also in the same bunch, life will be better for her.</p>
<p>If she is in the first group and finds roommates in the other group, she will be no better off than in the dorms until she gets better roommates.</p>
<p>If she is in the other group with roommates in the first, she will soon be looking for somewhere else to live as she will get kicked out.</p>
<p>If she is in the second group with roommates who are like her, watch out!</p>
<p>My soph. S is living off campus this year and seems to love it. He is in a complex that is all students and each student rents his own room in the apartment independent of his roommates. All of the utilities and cable/internet are rolled into the rent payment which can be paid online.</p>
<p>Knowing that the guys wouldn’t do a lot of heavy duty cooking, S decided to purchase a meal plan similiar to what he had when living on campus. He says that way he can be assured of at least one good meal a day.</p>
<p>He doesn’t seem to miss the dorm life at all.</p>
<p>Learn how to find and maintain good roommates will make finding and keeping a lifelong partner easy.</p>
<p>Learn how to find and maintain good roommates will make finding and keeping a lifelong partner easy.</p>
<p>I only pushed “submit,” once. Honest. Then I went to get some water and come back to many many posts. Roommates, aren’t that important unless that roommate makes you sleep on the couch all the time.</p>
<p>Packmom,
Your S’s situation sounds ideal for a 1st timer living off campus. Had my daughter had an option such as you describe, I would have been all for it. Well, as long as it’s walking distance to campus, that is :)</p>
<p>curioser,
In my S’s college town (well, city) there are several apartment complexes set up this same way. I know the builders of the one S is in have complexes in two other college towns that have large state u’s. Since on campus housing is limited and many students would just rather live off campus, these builders have found a goldmine.
Each apartment 3 or 4 bedroom apartment comes with a washer /dryer, a built in entertainment center in the living area and the bedrooms have platform beds with drawer storage underneath, desks and 6x5 foot closets. Each roommate has a key that opens his room only so there is no worry about roommates or visitors rummaging through the room when you’re not home. Each roommate signs a separate year long contract and is responsible for his rent only. The complex also has a swimming pool and small workout room.<br>
It is not walking distance to campus (about 3 or 4 miles away) but the apartment complex has it’s own bus that runs back and forth every 30 minutes all day long. The university bus line runs by there too.</p>
<p>Kids love it and the developers are getting rich.</p>
<p>Packmom, if that city is Raleigh–do you know a website that shows where the university bus line runs?</p>
<p>My son lives in a building much like what PackMom describes. </p>
<p>Each apartment has either two or four bedrooms – plus a small living room, a full kitchen, and a closet with a washer and dryer in it. In some of the apartments, every room has its own bathroom; in others, two bedrooms share a bath. Each bedroom has a separate lock, and they are all single bedrooms. Each tenant is responsible for his own rent. All tenants must be students at the adjacent university.</p>
<p>One thousand kids live in this high-rise building, a block from the edge of campus (at a university that is obviously rather desperate for housing). </p>
<p>It is mostly a good arrangement, except that the management charges a startlingly high fee for letting locked-out kids into their rooms (and their roommates can’t let them in since each room has a different key). Also, if one person moves out of the apartment, the remaining kids have only a short period of time in which to pull in a roommate. (My son was a pull-in; I remember that we had to do things FAST.) After that, an arbitrary person off the waiting list is assigned to the apartment, just as would be done in a dorm. One of my son’s three apartment mates is a total stranger who was assigned to the group in this way (it seems to be working out OK, though). Because the management reserves the right to assign random people to empty rooms, I think that it is not possible to mix genders within the four-bedroom apartments.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input, there has been a lot of info posted!</p>
<p>mkm56, I found the info. on the Wolfline on the NCSU website. The easiest thing to do is click the search button at the top right and type in Wolfline.<br>
Tried to get the address to go directly to that page for you but couldn’t get it to work.</p>
<p>Landlord Issues
Some of the previous posts reminded me of the huge landlord problems that I had. One woman flatly refused to fix anything. We had a toilet that would not flush toilet paper from our move-in day onwards. Finally, one of my roommates said that her father was a lawyer (completely not true, but effective) and we quoted the Department of Health requirements at her. The law said that she had five days to fix such a huge problem (since it was a health issue); she took over three months. Although, once we mentioned the word “lawyer,” things got fixed. Her attitude went from, “Well, don’t flush your toilet paper” to “Oh, let me get you a new toilet because snaking it isn’t working.”</p>
<p>Another time, my roommate’s bedroom would not get warm. It was an addition to the house, off the kitchen, and required the rest of the house to be heated to about 80 to get above 60 in the winter, and even then, she had to keep her door open and use a fan to circulate air. After a month of her waking up with frost on the inside of her room, I called up the landlady, who completely blew me off. Finally, I looked up the law and told her that the room, as it was, was not up to code for a bedroom and that I would be forced to contact the authorities. The next day, the room got its own heating and thermostat. </p>
<p>Then again, this is the same landlady who, when the pilot on the stove was broken and the kitchen was filling with fumes, told us to light a match. </p>
<p>Sad thing was, we asked the previous tenants what they thought of her, and they said, “Flaky.” IMO, flaky is having to remind someone to fix a screen, not to threaten litigation before a health hazard gets fixed.</p>
<p>Then there was another apartment with mice. They had mousetraps and suggested that we get a cat (although we could not, as one roomie was allergic). The rodent issue became problematic when one of them bit me in my sleep. I woke up at 4 am when I felt something in my bed. I ripped the covers off, jumped up with my heart hammering so hard that I really thought I would die, and looked around in the darkness to find whatever the h-ll was in my room. I got out of bed, walked around, turned on a light, and saw a huge bloodstain around the foot of my bed. I looked down to see blood streaming out of a bite mark on my left leg. EEEWWWWW!!! Hospital time!</p>
<p>Two of my Ds have lived in apartments after one or two years in dorms. They much preferred having an apartment with roommates they know. The advantages far outweighed any disadvantages for both of them. Dorm life is noisy, and busy, and disruptive, a lot of the time. I think it’s important for kids to live in a dorm for freshman year, at least, in order to establish friendships and develop a feeling of community for their school. After that, most friendships are established and kids know who they do and don’t want to live with, for the following years. Privacy, peace & quiet, more independent living, pets, fewer rules, all good reasons for choosing this option. The summer issue can be handled by subletting, if desired and necessary. Sometimes one or more roommates stay over the summer to work, do an internship, take summer classes. Even with the full year’s rent considered, it still worked out to be less expensive than a dorm, although this was not a major consideration in the decision.</p>
<p>My D3 is in a dorm which is all apartments, and run by the university. Each person has their own room, there are four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a huge common room, and a large kitchen. Furniture is provided but the kids bring their own kitchen stuff, a tv, etc. My D has brought a bowl chair for her room and extra lamps. Dorms always seem to need extra lighting. The kids are still able to get a mealplan and all of them do, as the dining hall is a place where they like to meet all their friends at the end of a day, or sometimes at the beginning of the day, to socialize. They have the option of eating in the apartment when the weather is bad or if it’s quicker before an evening class, etc. She loves it. She’s able to stay in university housing for all four years, as long as she maintains a certain gpa.</p>
<p>It amuses me to see these discussions about living in apartments and houses as students because at almost all Canadian universities, kids live in res for first year, and then move into apartments after that. Very, very few stay in res after one year, my D’s uni is the exception. Each community surrounding these universities has vast amounts of student housing opportunities available, in apartments, houses, converted houses, etc. Everyone expects that they’ll have to find their own housing after first year and they do! They all deal with landlords, grocery shopping, walking or taking a bus to classes, it’s truly not that difficult. The comment about no one wanting to walk more than a block with their laundry is telling, I think. Lots of kids walk more than a block, I know I did when I was in college years ago! Naturally, there may be some places which don’t have public transit or taxis which would make it more difficult, but I can’t really think of any college campuses that I’ve been to where it would be impossible.</p>
<p>Having known dozens and dozens of kids who have lived in such arrangements ‘off campus’, I don’t see that it’s the problem that many people think it will be.</p>
<p>Thanks Packmom.</p>
<p>We have multiple years of experience with this. In one case a DD shared a huge house with 15-20 girls. They were all members of a campus group, so had a certain cohesiveness and a reason to work things out in hassles. Each lease is signed separately, so you are responsible for you and your roommates room only, not the entire house, though any bills for repairs are shared.</p>
<p>It can be frustrating to deal with issues with utility usage, you use too much heat, I use too much air conditioning, etc; one wants no TV, one wants the HBO/Showtime package…… Summer sublets are complicated. </p>
<p>In some locations, students can rent places for the school year, but do not have to rent for the summer, in those cases you may have to put down a deposit for the fall in April/May before getting your current deposit back in July.</p>
<p>In this case, it works very well, the off campus house is actually closer to some classrooms than campus housing; she lives in a real college town where every one all around is walking to and from class, there is no isolation, and it is cheaper than dorm housing. No car is needed. </p>
<p>Some places come with basic furniture, some you have to furnish, then store the furnishings in the summertime.</p>
<p>With another DD we had two horrid roommate experiences. Do not use roommates.com, only room with people you truly enjoy and hopefully know something about. High security deposits protect the landlord, but if you have a problem, even a real, verifiable, serious issue with a roommate, unless you can bring in some one to take over the lease and pay you your security deposit, you either pay the rent and stay there, move out and still pay the rent, or, if you choose not to pay, you have a heavy ding on your credit at an early age. Many landlords renting to students require parental guarantees on the lease leaving no good option to move out, even if your student is in danger!</p>
<p>We had a situation with a girl who we discovered had illegal habits and also virtually moved her BF in with them, but he did not pay any portion of rent, nor expenses. He did not have his own apartment elsewhere and spend a lot of time at his girlfriends place, he just came for a visit from out of town and stayed. It was extremely distracting from classes, etc., and a situation with lots of 1-2-3 hours late night calls about what to do, it became very scary, we were finally able to move my DD out and get off the lease, but it was tough, expensive, and bizarre, with the girl shouting expletives at my D and her Dad as they moved my D’s things out!</p>
<p>Being in an off-campus situation at a commuter campus where “everybody” except freshman lives off-campus, does not lead to the type of interaction on a daily basis where you can continue to make good friends, unless you join some campus organizations and make your own groups of friends. If most people live off-campus, it does no good for your student to stay on campus in order to connect with others, your student would have to find his/her connections in self-selected groups.</p>
<p>Comparing the costs to dorms, not only should you consider the costs of utilities, food, etc., but also car insurance, gas, and parking permits, if your situation requires a vehicle to live off-campus, this could add $200-$400 a month in costs plus dealing with the hassles of parking on campus.</p>
<p>Anything where you are not required to rely on the roommate, whether it be utilities included, deposits being separate or anthing else, I would recommend. We have suggested to my one D after her three different roommates, that she never have a roommate again, she simply has not chosen well. Seemingly nice girls, but two of the three revealed bizarre personalities in time. And that ends up costly mom & dad money and it has to take some sort of toll on the student’s grades, to be distracted by all that.</p>
<p>I lived off campus my final two years of college, and it was a great experience. No cafeteria food (although food in those days was a very far cry from today’s food choices), no roomate with the boyfriend in your face, or playing music when you wanted to study etcetcetc. There were no issues with social life; all my friends lived off campus too, and we were not at all like “commuter students”.</p>
<p>If your child is thrifty and doesn’t go to school in a major metro areas, it can be cheaper to live off campus. If the school is in an urban area, I think it is actually quite a bit more expensive to do off campus.</p>
<p>Allmusic,
you make an excellent point re higher costs to rent an apt if in an unrban area. I think that’s probably one of the key factors–certainly while my D’s campus is an a very attractive neighborhood, it is also extremely pricey when looking off campus for rentals. </p>
<p>I also think that the advice of going without a roommate will be what I advise my own D when she returns from her study abroad for her senior year. I believe she’d absolutely relish just being responsible for herself, not to mention the delight of the privacy she’d gain. She’s got plenty of social opportunities and really needs a safety zone of her own place without those emotional AND financial distractions.</p>
<p>It all depends on the student(s) involved. If it’s a uni apt, there often isn’t that much difference than dorm living in terms of responsibility, though there is that extra common area that needs to be cleaned and the apt mates have to somehow come up with a way to to do that. The bathroom and kitchen are particularly sensitive areas. But if the kid is eating on campus, anyways, it isn’t that big of a deal.</p>
<p>The can of worms opens when you get a bunch of kids renting a non uni apartment, splitting the rent, utilities, responsibilities, etc. First of all, if your kid is having trouble with his checkbook and keeping organized with school files, it is one more thing to foul up when he is responsible for those bills. Add to it the responsibility levels of the sharemates. If the place is a dump needing upkeep and repairs, that is another issue that has to e dealt with. I have seen all kinds of headaches ensue that have ended up with police and court involvement. Many times it becomes important for the parent to become involved. It is one more thing to worry about. </p>
<p>My own feeling about off campus/non uni housing is that it is something that can wait a few more years when student is more mature and is not juggling classwork. A job usually has more structure than school, and the bill paying and upkeep can be scheduled in. The joy of being the student is the unstructured, slovenly living that can be afforded. This does not apply if you have a student who is truly ready to take on the responsibility of an apartment, but more times than not, I have see problems come out of the arrangement.</p>
<p>My son desperately wanted to move into a dilapadated house off campus with friends in Buffalo. I put him off, and he is in a dorm though I think he was spending most of his time at the apt. Until this past weekend, when the snow storm hit Buffalo. The power is out at the house, it is freezing cold in Buffalo, and the mile and a half hike to the South Campus bus stop is suddenly a big issue. North Campus where his dorm room is, has not been affected at all as far as power, and the bus stops in a garaged like area–he does not even have to step outside. The dining hall is inside the dorm complex; again, he does not have to go out. also with 5-6 kids involved the probability of one of the welching on the deal before year end is high. Mayb even more than one of them. It did not seem like a good idea to us even though the cost was dirt cheap.</p>