Over the summer, when I got dinner with a friend of a friend from Boston College, she asked me if I had my junior-year housing figured out yet. I laughed and said no, thinking it was a silly question. I mean, why would I already have my housing figured out over a year in advance? When I asked her the same question, she replied that she and her roommates signed a lease at the end of her freshman year. In fact, she mentioned knowing a few groups who had already signed. I thought it was ridiculous that people would have their housing situations figured out so soon, but little did I know that this would certainly not be the last time I felt stressed over off-campus housing.
One of the first weekends back at school, my friends and I called a meeting to get started on the housing process. It’s so insane that there’s so much pressure to find a house right away. We had barely moved into our sophomore-year housing when we had to start looking for a house, or else all the “good” ones would be taken. Spoiler alert: most of the houses are pretty much the same. When it came time to tour, there were plenty of great options, but the unneeded pressure going into the year made us scared about what would be left.
While touring, we ran into another issue that brought a mountain of stress: realtors and landlords. When it came time to hire a realtor, my friends and I were left at a crossroads. Although we were warned not to use a student realtor, hiring a professional was far more expensive. Eventually, we decided to use a professional realtor from a local agency near campus, but this was only where our problems began. After our first round of tours, we were completely ghosted by our original broker. Not only was this unprofessional, but it added unneeded stress to our situation. We already had absolutely no idea what we were doing, but having no one to help us with the process added an extra layer of difficulty. We were able to find another realtor who was a lot more helpful, although that came with its flaws.
While I’m sure it’s standard procedure, once we expressed interest in a house, we were hounded by the broker to sign as soon as possible. Many of my friends received texts urging us to sign since “we did show the unit a couple of times yesterday” and “other groups have also had an interest in signing it.” Obviously, the realtor just wanted his check. But again, there’s so much unnecessary pressure coming from all sides pushing you to find a house at least a year in advance.
Then, there was the issue of our landlord. When my friends and I were doing a deeper dive on one of the houses, the landlord refused to let us see the lease in advance. From what we understood, this is not at all normal. The lease includes a lot of valuable information on the rules and what you should expect while living in the house. For example, some leases do not allow subletters, which is extremely important to any BC student who wishes to study abroad. Luckily, the house is currently being rented by a member of the Gavel (shoutout Anna!) who sent me the lease so we could see what we were getting into.
Now that we’ve signed the lease, you would think we would be able to relax. Think again! Many of the girls in my group and I have already begun networking for subletters. Even though it’s hard to do anything about finding subletters until more information about where people are studying abroad comes out, it’s always in the back of our minds. Most students need to find a subletter, or else thousands of dollars will go down the drain. Once study abroad placements come out, you may find me texting the Gavel GroupMe asking if anyone needs a lease for next year!
Although the process is stressful and pretty much no one has any idea of how to find and lease a house, BC has plenty of resources to help you find off-campus housing. BC has an entire website dedicated to helping students with the off-campus housing process. On the website, students have the ability to view available houses, find subletters, and more. Additionally, many of my roommates went to the off-campus housing fair this fall to ask questions about the process. The BC representatives helped us to understand the range of prices we should expect to see and where we ended up falling on that scale. They also helped us to review our lease to make sure there was nothing unusual or illegal about what we were signing. I absolutely recommend using the resources that BC provides to help with the process.
Finding a house was extremely stressful, and I know that the stress has just begun, but I can’t wait to live off-campus next year. After living in a quad on CoRo this year, I am looking forward to the opportunity to live with all of my friends. I can already picture the Bachelor watch parties that will happen in our living room next year.
International Studies major with a passion for gossip and chai lattes.
