‘Student ghetto’ gold mine
Landlords see an increase in early leasing
Groups search for houses at the beginning of the school year.
Monday, October 8th, 2007
Whitney Cherpitel, Overland Park junior, realized the competitiveness of leasing houses on Tennessee Street when she looked at a house for the second time, and found another group already touring it.
Cherpitel called the landlord immediately after the tour was over, and leased the eight-person house for next school year before the other group could.
“It’s kind of a race to find the nicer houses,” Cherpitel said. “We basically gave ourselves a week to find a house.”
We’ve already had people asking about it, but we haven’t decided what we’re going to do.
-Abby Miller, Bloomington, Minn., senior
Students looking for houses in the “student ghetto” around Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio streets for the 2008 school year have been signing leases earlier than usual.
Serena Hearn, a landlord who rents out several different sized houses, said that this was the earliest she had ever seen students start looking. Hearn has been renting houses for eight years, and said that people start looking a month earlier every year. She has already rented out a third of her houses.
“Someone starts the stampede and once it starts, it’s like a gold rush,” Hearn said. “Now I’m worried, because I don’t know how big this stampede is.”
Hearn said she thought that it was mainly groups from sororities and fraternities wanting to live out-of-house who were looking so early. She said it has been difficult, because usually she uses August and September to focus on maintenance of her houses.
Joe Shull, Lenexa junior, said he and a group friends picked out a house they wanted at the end of last year, and spoke to the landlord in early August. Shull said the landlord told them he would lease to them, however, when he received a better offer from a group of women, he rented the house to them instead.
“I think our number one obstacle was that we were a bunch of guys,” Shull said. “We spoke to another landlord who said he wouldn’t rent out to guys at all.”
Shull said he thought the pressure to find a house intensified after talking to people in other fraternities who had already signed a lease.
Rick Krupper, who leases around eight houses in the “student ghetto,” said last year he was showing houses at the end of October and signing them in November.
“I thought that was early, and then this year I was showing houses in the first part of September,” Krupper said. “I can’t believe it.”
Krupper said that the students who were looking earlier wanted the nicer houses, with landlords that take care of them.
Nicole Westerdeck, a leasing agent for Hawks Pointe Apartments, said people were looking at apartments earlier than usual as well. She said Hawks Pointe already had people looking at apartments for next year, but that most students wouldn’t fill out applications until November or December.
“The Lawrence market is always competitive,” Westerdeck said. “Location is always a prime factor, especially in students.”
Hearn said signing leases early is now putting pressure on students to decide whether they want to live in the house they are currently in for another year. She said her deadline for groups to decide whether they wanted to stay used to be December, but now she had to move it to Oct. 15.
“I don’t want to throw people out of their house who want to stay,” Hearn said.
One method tenants use to help lease houses is to pass them down to friends or members of their fraternity or sorority.
Abby Miller, Bloomington, Minn., senior, who has a house on Ohio, said she would like to pass her house down to other girls in her sorority, but that the landlord would make the final decision.
“We’ve already had people asking about it, but we haven’t decided what we’re going to do,” Miller said.
Emily Enright, Manhattan junior, was able to lease a nine-person house that a group of girls from her sorority currently live in.
“We knew we wanted it, so we got on it really early,” Enright said.
Krupper said that he thinks signing houses this early is a risk, because students could decide not to come back or to change schools.
“That’s a long time to make an advanced commitment for a student I think,” Krupper said. “But they’re willing to do it.”
— Edited by Ashlee Kieler
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