Northwestern students’ Spring Quarter scramble to find housing in Evanston for the summer wasn’t Phillip Jenouri’s first rodeo. Last year, the rising Weinberg junior said he took the first offer he could find. But this year, he knew better.
“If you’re subletting, the power is in your hands for the most part,” Jenouri said.
Many NU students who need to stay near campus over the summer sublet rooms from other students off campus. Prospective subletters often begin the process early to ensure they’ll find housing, and as this summer gets underway, subletters and tenants reflected on the process and offered their insights.
Rising Weinberg sophomore Zein Jbeli said he began his search for summer housing in late April, searching for somewhere cost effective that also felt right.
“One of the things that I really focused on was sunlight in the room,” Jbeli said. “I definitely did not want to pay a lot of money, but also I wanted a good room. I was mostly checking the room’s condition overall.”
As an international student, Jbeli looked on the international financial aid group chat to find housing listings. He said he followed up on one of the posts, despite it being only the second property he saw, and he went with it.
Because it was Jbeli’s first time subletting in Evanston, he said he needed to make sure his summer research grant covered the cost. He said he negotiated to have the price of utilities included with the rent.
Jenouri sublet a room last summer for $750 per month, but could’ve done better, he said.
“Last year, I just didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “I immediately took the first offer I found. I didn’t even try to go see anything else. And it worked out. But this year was a little different. I went in wanting to negotiate a lot more.”
This summer, Jenouri will continue his biology research from last summer. He reached out to the landlord of the apartment he’ll move into in the fall, hoping to move in over the summer before they posted or advertised the building for this season. They went back and forth, negotiating pricing as the academic year went on.
Jenouri said he made sure to tour each potential building and check for things like water pressure and window sealings, but the main factor determining his subletting decision was the cost. He said a lot of subletters will take the first deal they hear and not realize they can negotiate pricing.
“A lot of kids will just take the first thing they hear, and they won’t realize that you can do much lower than the rent costs,” Jenouri said.
On the other side of the subletting process, rising Weinberg senior Paulina Fenske is looking to sublet her apartment in the fall while she’s abroad, marking her first experience with the Evanston subletting process.
“I feel like I’ve been a little behind in terms of finding a subletter,” Fenske said. “I’m trying to put together photos of the apartment right now to post on the Facebook page, because I’ve heard from friends that this is the easiest channel to go through to find subletters.”
Fenske said she expects it to be more difficult to find a subletter for the fall than the summer, because fewer people are searching for housing only for Fall Quarter. She said the University doesn’t provide dorm housing to all students over the summer, leading to a higher demand for off-campus housing through subletting. Regardless, Fenske said she’s not too worried about the process.
“I think it should be fine,” she said. “Maybe it’ll end up being a grad student or something, maybe not an undergrad. I’m feeling optimistic.”
Fenske said she’s looking to sublet to someone who will be a good roommate in her apartment. She shares her apartment with two close friends who are flexible and trust that she will find someone clean and respectful for the shared space. Ideally, she hopes to sublet to someone she and her roommates know and like.
“I guess it’s kind of a lengthy process throughout this summer of getting to know multiple people, because everybody kind of has a different price range and version of the right fit,” Fenske said. “I think it’ll work out so that I don’t have to eat the costs either.”
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