Students struggle to deal with full-year leases

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Making living arrangements for the summer can be a frustrating and complicated process for students.

With many apartment complexes offering only 12-month leases, students can be forced to scramble to find someone to take their lease during the summer or risk paying for an unused apartment.

The decision of where to live wasn’t difficult for Stephanie Chaczyk, a nutritional sciences senior, who signed a lease to live in a duplex last July, but many of her friends dealt with the subleasing crunch.

“I know a lot of people that were trying to sublease,” Chaczyk said. “They would go down in their price just to get something out of it.”

MTH Management always has offered tenants the sole option of signing a 12-month lease, regional director Justin Hentemann said.

While he understands students desire for flexibility in their living options, Hentemann said the company’s current policy makes sure there aren’t any empty buildings during the summer months.

“Finding people that want to live in the summer can be more of a challenge,” Hentemann said. “So you’re not losing income for the building during those three months.”

Snyder and Phillips halls are the only dorms open to students during the summer with around 300 residents this semester, Associate Director of residence life Amy Franklin-Craft said.

Unlike apartment complexes, the dorms aren’t interested in being a business institution, Franklin-Craft said, but they are interested in providing students the service needed to do well academically.

“I think for many students (flexibility in leasing) is absolutely a determining factor,” she said. “For students, that will be graduating or looking to participate in study abroad. … They aren’t held to the contract, and I think that is exceedingly important.”

Biochemistry and molecular biology sophomore Matt Smith currently is living in the dorms but is considering looking into apartments next year.

Like Chaczyk, Smith had several friends looking to sublease their apartments this summer, but they were unable to find anyone, leaving his friends to pay for an apartment they couldn’t use.

“If students want to do something else during the summer, they shouldn’t have to pay,” Smith said. “(Having) an option would be better than straight up 12 months. They’d probably get more business, too.”

Students at the University of Michigan also are limited to a 12-month lease, but Patricia Miller, a leasing agent for Campus Management Inc. in Ann Arbor, said the company hasn’t been affected.

Campus Management Inc. has leased all of their properties for the past academic year and currently has leases for 99 percent of their properties for the upcoming school year, she said.

Miller gave the caveat that between 33–40 percent of apartments are being sublet, and Chaczyk said finding someone interested in a sublease can be extremely stressful.

“You’re pressing for time because you’re trying to get face value, and you want to act quickly,” she said. “Buyers would be interested and then back out because they found a better deal elsewhere.”

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