E.L. residents can grade landlords on new website

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After some difficult experiences with landlords in his college days, Michael Montesano is looking to make the process of finding a workable rental space easier for college students across the nation.

Montesano and his business partner, Jorge Galindez, recently created a new website called grademylandlord.com in an attempt to accomplish this goal.

The site allows students to upload schools, locations and ratings for hundreds of rental spaces in the U.S. and potentially could lead them to finding a space that fits their needs.

The site currently has properties available for rating in locations surrounding more than 40 schools, including MSU.

Individual properties and the landlords in charge of them can be rated on categories such as party tolerance, security deposit return, contract, timeliness, kindness and maintenance, and also can be rated on a scale of one to five stars, according to the website.

Montesano said the site only has been up for approximately 10 days but has received a lot of positive feedback from students who already have had the opportunity to use the site.

He said besides the ratings, the site also helps students who are unfamiliar with the area to browse properties thoroughly from their computers.

“The site is giving them a place to look for properties that they might not have noticed by driving around,” he said.

The nature of the site might help students by consolidating many of the area’s properties into one place so they don’t have to spend too much time looking for properties that might suit them, said Tom Hamlin, owner of MC Properties, LLC.

“They can look and see (properties in the area), and not have to drive around the streets,” he said.

All the schools, landlords and properties available on the site are uploaded by students and for students, Montesano said.

He said one of the main goals of the site was to make the search for apartments simple.

“We want to make this free and easy to access so that anyone can go on and voice their opinion,” Montesano said.

The opportunity for students to see how former student renters interacted with their landlords likely will benefit those looking to live off campus, international relations senior Paddy Latorre said.

She said she has had a pleasant experience with her landlord over the past year, and she said other student renters also should have a chance to get a similar experience.

“It’s really important to have a positive relationship with your landlord, and seeing if past renters have had that before would be beneficial,” Latorre said.

Montesano said the site primarily serves students looking for housing in and around their respective campuses but said he’d also like to see the presence of landlords on the site to foster better relationships between renters and property owners.

“We want this to give students a chance to make things better,” he said. “The landlords can be given a chance to correct a potential problem — if a student has a problem, the landlord has a chance to fix that and make it right.”

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