Student Housing

In any rental market, it’s incredibly important to fine-tune marketing efforts to help maximize the number of leads from prospective tenants. Crafting a high quality online advertisement helps to effectively deliver information about a rental property, while also inciting a renter’s interest.

Landlords and property managers often ask our staff how they can improve their online property listings, so we’ve compiled a list of valuable tips.

When young people attend college or university, they will often be living away from home for the first time. This can be a concern for parents as they try to ensure their children will be safe when they're not living under the same roof. The following is important fire safety information that every student should know before moving away from home. Parents should discuss these basic fire safety rules with their kids before dropping them off at their new dwelling.

Have you ever wondered what amenities and features students are most interested in for their housing accommodations? We have researched some information, in order to answer this question for landlords and property managers of student housing.

Studying in your apartment can often be challenging, but there are a few elements that should be in place to maximize your comfort and your ability to focus. No matter where you are, you should be free from too much visual or auditory distraction. Just how free you need to be from these distractions will probably depend on your personal habits. If you find you tend to get distracted by movement in your peripheral vision, for example, it's probably not a great idea for you to try to study with the T.V. on our a rowdy roommate.

Many students who are searching for housing face the challenge of finding a lease that matches the length of their academic year. In most college and university cities, it’s fairly common for landlords and property managers to offer a twelve month lease; however, many students are only in school for eight to nine months. With the majority of these students returning home for the summer, they are left paying for three to four months of rent, when they aren’t occupying the accommodations. This leads to the question - do short leases attract students?

Often student tenants have the common misconception that their possessions will be covered by the insurance coverage of their landlord or parents, while away at school. This is likely why many students dismiss renters insurance as something they can live without.

Quite commonly, the property owner’s insurance will only cover the property itself; not any of the contents inside the building. This raises the question - do students need renters insurance?

A variety of free-to-post classified and listing websites are scattered across the Internet. They are often seen as an ideal marketing platform for rental property owners, simply because they are free. But in the long run, is there an associated cost?

A prominent concern of many students who move away to college or university is whether or not they will enjoy a fruitful and active social life.

Often one of the highly touted benefits of on-campus housing is the belief that it’s particularly easy to make friends and develop a social network. One of the arguments against off-campus housing is that it’s more difficult to develop a social network and create an active social life. This is a myth!

At Places4Students we see a lot of great rental advertisements uploaded to our website. We decided to put together this helpful list of do’s and don’ts for online rental property listings to help landlords and property managers create outstanding advertisements!

Across North America, it’s a fairly standard practice for landlords to request tenants to provide a security deposit before moving into a rental unit. In most cases, the security deposit amounts to one month of rent. The premise is that the deposit will be returned once the tenant moves out, provided the rental is in the same condition as when it was rented to the tenant (except for normal wear and tear). Some of the most common reasons why renters lose their security deposit are below, as well as how these situations can be avoided.

The endeavor of finding the perfect roommate is a difficult one. It involves very careful screening and selection.

Students will often spend 8 months or more living with a roommate, so it’s important they find someone who is compatible to live with. Often students are assigned roommates with little or no choice in the selection process when living on-campus. However, students residing off-campus generally have more freedom to select a compatible roommate.

Most of the landlords using Places4Students.com have found it to be a safe and convenient way to advertise their rental properties to potential tenants. However, as with all websites, we occasionally receive reports of scams and fraud attempts.

Students interested in living off-campus might get lucky and find an 8 to 9 month lease; but in most cases, students get locked into a 12 month lease. Most students won’t live in the unit for all 12 months and will consider subletting their place, to help cover costs. Before trying to find someone to sublet your place, consider a few important things:

Finding and replacing tenants can be a costly task for landlords. When property managers come across great tenants, it’s in their best interest to try to retain them for as long as possible.

Here are some proven strategies that landlords can use to find good tenants and keep them:

Places4Students.com is the world's premier website for landlords to advertise their rental properties to post-secondary students. Places4Students provides students, schools, and landlords with the highest quality off-campus housing registry service. Places4Students.com is an online search engine that allows you to effectively view rental property ads right from your school's website.

Wouldn’t it be great if landlords could use a crystal ball to determine which applicants would make the best tenants? It would certainly make a property manager’s job easier! Wrong choices can often lead to problems down the road and affect the landlord’s bottom line negatively.

This is a fairly common question that our staff at Places4Students.com often receive from landlords - When is the best time to post my rental property advertisement for students?

Unfortunately, there is no absolute answer to this question. But as a rule, we generally find that the old saying usually applies - The early bird gets the worm!