With house-hunting season right around the corner, Places4Students, the new official online resource for students to find off-campus housing, is expecting a surge in usage, Student Services Director
Stephanie Mabrey said.

Launched last spring after Student Senate approval, Places4Students (www.placesforstudents.com) was implemented to more effectively cater to specific student needs with options to search houses by location, distance from campus and other amenities.

Student Senate oversees the website, acting as a middleman between the company and university.  They monitor the houses being advertised to be sure they are quality properties and well maintained, Mabrey said. Senate makes sure Places4Students is a safe, reliable place to look for student housing.

“It’s a great way for us to be able to make sure we are providing students properties that we want students living in,” Mabrey said. “We can keep an eye on what landlords are posting on there … we can make sure students are living in places we find fit for our students.”

Being able to search for specific features of a house makes the website especially student friendly, Mabrey said.  Options like location, pricing, number of bedrooms, distance from campus and many others help narrow down the house search.

“It offers a lot of great search options for students looking for properties,” Mabrey said. “With this website, you can search by location and also by amenity.  You can search for places where pets are allowed … by the rent level, there are tons of different options.”

A feature found on the website called “Roommate Preferences” allows landlords and student who are trying to lease a room to post an advertisements on the site specific to the kind of person they want living in their house.

Smoking preferences, social habits, cleanliness, gender and age are all preferences to consider when searching for a roommate or tenant.

“The specific search options are perfect for finding a house exactly how you want it,” sophomore house-hunter Alec Pankow said.  “It makes the search easy.”

Places4Students is also helpful with subleasing. Within the Student Sublets section, users can search for or post advertisements that are specifically
short-term agreements.

Places4Students is more comprehensive than most search engines and stays up to date on postings, making it more appealing to student usage, Mabrey said. Unlike other ways to search for housing like sorting through classifieds or combing through hard-copy lists, that don’t stay updated, the site keeps the fresh listings on top for easy access, Mabrey said.

With the rush of finding student housing coming soon, the website will be getting a lot of traffic, so keep an eye out for postings. Happy hunting.