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In this episode of NU Declassified, sophomores talk about signing leases for off campus houses upwards of a year before their move in date.
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In this episode of NU Declassified, sophomores talk about signing leases for off-campus houses upwards of a year before their move-in date.
LUANA MAYER: I started thinking about the house in winter quarter and just talking to people who had a house already about their process, how it was. But it was really like spring quarter that we actually started going looking at the houses, especially during finals week.
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BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Bettina Sánchez Córdova. This is NU Declassified, a podcast that takes a look into how Wildcats thrive and survive at Northwestern. That was Luana Mayer, a Weinberg sophomore who was looking for her off-campus housing last spring. In this episode, we’ll be talking to sophomores about how they found off-campus houses for their junior year.
JABALI ZOIA: We worked a lot. We had like an agent helping us out and stuff. I know they keep like asking, they keep giving you deadlines and stuff, and we never really reached the deadline. And they gave us like extended deadlines.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: The process of finding off-campus housing requires lots of organization according to sophomore Jabali Zoia. Finding a location, the right price range, and the right people to live with can be challenging, just as sophomore Matilde Bernal says.
MATILDE BERNAL: I think that was the initial difficulty, which is like finding people that were committed and wanted to live in the house.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: Once all the details were set, and everyone was decided on a house to live in, everything seemed to calm down … at least for a while.
MATILDE BERNAL: We’re students. We’ve never signed a lease. We’ve never done something like this before. So I feel like it’s very easy to be manipulated like in terms of the price inflations or like kind of like pressuring people to sign by saying that, “We don’t have any more space. There are like two other people on this offer.” So I think definitely like in that sense a lot of people kind of feel pressured and make decisions that they haven’t fully thought through.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: Not only is finding a house difficult, but signing a lease can be overwhelming for many students.
JABALI ZOIA: It was a lot of boys trying to put this all together, and the agent was definitely putting a lot of pressure on us, and we were all scrambling a lot. She made it seem like if we didn’t say “right here right now,” we would have lost the house completely. And we wouldn’t have had anywhere to stay.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: While competitive, the entire process took them around a month.
MATILDE BERNAL : It was like a two-part process. First, we filled out information to even get approved for the lease. And then afterward we had our official, kind of, down payment and lease in July, this past summer.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: Many students consider finding houses to be the most affordable option for living off campus. Still, prices are high and there are many upfront costs.
JABALI ZOIA: We had to put a down payment. We also had to pay for first month’s rent, which was really annoying. I had a lot of trouble with that money-wise. To the point where I had to have some of my friends pay for me actually for at least some of the rent. And then I was able to pay back later.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: Bernal added that she was hoping for a smoother transition.
MATILDE BERNAL: What played a factor for me is like having that huge jump from living on campus and being around your friends all the time to like being off campus and maybe living with like one other person.
BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: With the leases signed and all the details settled, these sophomores could settle on campus this September and look forward to their off-campus houses next year.
JABALI ZOIA: It’s definitely going to be a trip. It’s going to be interesting to cook my own food and everything. So yeah, I guess I’m excited, for sure. It’s the next step, you know? It’s a little bubble, now I’m kind of going a little bit more excited, but I’m going to become more of an adult.
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BETTINA SÁNCHEZ CÓRDOVA: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Bettina Sánchez Córdova. Thanks for listening to another episode of NU Declassified. This episode was reported and produced by me, Bettina Sánchez Córdova. The audio editors of The Daily Northwestern are Virginia Hunt and Lily Shen, the digital managing editors are Scott Hwang and Laura Simmons, and the editor in chief is Avani Kalra. Make sure to subscribe to The Daily Northwestern’s podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud to hear more episodes like this.
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