Come and get it.
The race to find housing for the 2007-08 school year is on, with students flocking to leasing offices across East Lansing, scrambling to get a house or apartment that's close to campus, yet still affordable.
Having already signed a lease for a house this year, Scott Dunn, a political science and pre-law junior, said Sunday afternoon that he and his roommates began looking for another place to live as soon as school started because they wanted their own bedrooms. Dunn and some of his future roommates currently live in Cedar Village.
"If you don't find one early, you don't get a good place to live," he said.
Most students begin house hunting a few weeks after school starts, narrowing the options for people who want to sign leases later in the semester.
The push to sign leases early in the fall semester is driven by students, said Matt Hagan, an agent at Hagan Realty, which owns about 150 rental homes in East Lansing.
"We don't necessarily want to start this early, but we start getting calls the first couple days of school," he said.
"Everybody is calling to rent houses — this is a very busy and crazy time of year."
A majority of the homes owned by Hagan Realty already are already leased, Hagan said.
He said students have been signing leases earlier in the fall semester for about 10 years. Before that, homes were leased in December or January, then it was pushed back to November, and now everything is snatched by the middle of October.
Students are pushed into looking for a house or apartment in the fall semester because many landlords begin leasing at an early date, said Carly Magee, a medical technology sophomore. Also a Cedar Village resident, Magee said she and her current roommates leased their apartment early last fall.
"If you don't look for it, you won't find a place to live," she said. "If you want a good place to live, you have to look soon. That's what we did last year."
Sunday marked the first leasing day of the year for students interested in DTN Management Co. properties, including Cedar Village apartments. Robin Allan, a leasing agent with DTN, said students were lined up in the morning to lease apartments in prime locations.
"A lot of Cedar Village and Waters Edge are gone," she said. "We had everybody on our staff in this morning."
By December, most places to live are taken, Allan said.
Even if a student doesn't immediately find a place to live, they will be able to find some kind of housing, said Annette Irwin, East Lansing's operations administrator for Neighborhood Conservation and Code Enforcement.
"The students make this a local phenomenon," she said. "I've spoken to many students who come into our office just panicked; there are lots of choices."
Just because students might not get an apartment or house in a prime location doesn't mean they can't look in other parts of the city, Irwin said.
When looking for a house or apartment to lease, it's important to actually look at the property, read the lease and find people to live with, Hagan said, adding that by doing each of these things, future conflicts can be avoided.
"Stuff gets rounded up very quickly," he said.
