Challenges You May Face When Renting To College Students

By Francine Fluetsch on June 25, 2015

When renting a place out to college students, there are some challenges you are going to have to expect that will be slightly different than renting to a family who is just starting out or an older couple.

image via www.philly.com

There are many different types of college students who could potentially be renting your place, so each year will be a new adventure for you, and you are going to want to be ready to deal with the situations to come.

Students can be loud.

College students are usually quite studious during the week because most of them do actually care about doing well in school, but once Thursday hits, the nights are going to get louder. After hitting the books for hours at a time, students like to let off some steam by throwing parties, getting drunk, and singing karaoke with their friends. Thirsty Thursday is the start of most of this, and some students continue the nightly festivities until Sunday, when they get their homework done and nurse their hangovers.

The problem is, the neighbors around the place you are renting to the students might not appreciate loud activities all the time, so this will definitely be a challenge you are going to have to deal with at one point or other. You could set quiet hours during the week so your tenants know they need to keep it down, and have it written in their contract so they won’t be as tempted to just go ahead with it anyway. Be a bit more lenient on the weekends so they can still let off steam, but it’s a good idea to warn them about the noise ahead of time, before it becomes an actual problem.

Students can be disgusting.

I’ve seen my fair share of nasty college student houses. A lot of students either don’t know how to clean, don’t care to clean, or are just too stubborn to clean. I’m not saying every place will be gross, but you might not like what you walk into when they are done renting.

The deposit money can be a good motivation for students to at least keep their house somewhat respectable, and definitely make sure to clean at the end, so having a high deposit at the beginning might be a good idea. You can also suggest that they leave the bathroom fan on while they shower so mold doesn’t grow (not something you want to deal with), and you can also have them get the carpets professionally cleaned as a part of their contract. This way, your house will not look totally horrendous at the end of their stay.

Students want pets.

If you decide that you don’t want pets in the place, just know that students don’t always listen to rules, and animals could be dwelling there without your knowledge. Animals offer awesome anxiety relief to the stressed out college student, so may I suggest that instead of banning pets from your place, why not just ask for an additional pet deposit? This way, if there are any damages, you’d have a way of dealing with it and the students would be able to have their pets.

If you absolutely don’t want pets, you may have to tell the students that if they bring them in, it would mean a breach of contract and they would have to move out.

Students can be late with rent.

College students have a lot of financial obligations looming over their heads, and sometimes it can be very overwhelming and stressful. While I’m sure you are sympathetic to their situation, you still want your money on time, so it might be a good idea to have one or two co-signers so if the students don’t pay for whatever reason, you know the money will be coming from somewhere.

I’d also suggest having each tenant being responsible for a certain amount of the rent, instead of holding them all accountable for the whole sum, because the students don’t all necessarily know one another when they move in and it wouldn’t be very fair to penalize all of the tenants just because one person didn’t pay.

Be upfront with them from the beginning on how they have to pay and when they need to do it, so there is absolutely no confusion in the matter. You also need to decide how long your grace period will be if they are late, and what repercussions will come if they are late on multiple occasions.

Students can be impatient.

With how fast our lives are buzzing and how demanding everyone is, your tenants may be impatient when a problem arises. If they email you about a problem, they will be expecting a response later that day. If you are okay with texting, this may be a better form of communication, or request that they call you with a problem. You need to be clear from the beginning if they are allowed to fix things themselves or if they have to go through you first, because if something is on the fritz that they need constantly, they might be bombarding you with emails.

These are just a few things to keep in mind when renting to college students. We aren’t all this crazy to rent to, but I guarantee you’ll be running into these challenges on more than one occasion as you continue to rent through the years, so it’s always good to be prepared.

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