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Housing advice for new student
Housing
OK. Today I will talk about the housing issue in Ann Arbor.
For students in the United States
I strongly encourage that you pay a visit yourself to Ann Arbor to check all the apt in your wish list. Because a) you can get to look at the apartment yourself instead of merely virtual tour and b) sometimes people found there house just by wandering around the city. But preparation is always good. Here I recommend some apt searching website for your reference.
http://www.si.umich.edu/stulife/housing.htm
http://www.housing.umich.edu/
These two are for on-campus housing
http://www.apartments.com/
http://www.apartments.com/
You can search for the apt in Ann Arbor and get a sense of what the rent and facility would be like here. You can even make up your own wish list for housing, so that your trip here would be more oriented.
http://www.umich.edu/~info/inside.html?http://www.umich.edu/~info/hotel.html
You can find some rating of your apt in this website
For international student
Housing is always a BIG issue for international students who travel all over the world and arrive at a totally strange environment. First, you would like to decide if you are going to rent the house before or after you arrive here. If you decided to rent an apt before you came here, you don’t need to worry about “no place to live after getting off the plane”. However, you may have to go through all the remote bargaining with the landlord, signing contract without even understand the condition and the likes. So usually, I recommend that you rent the apt after you arrive here. For the first few days of your arrival, you could either ask some friends you know here for temporal stay, search help from your country’s student association here, rent some temporal housing from people who sublease theirs, or book the hotels around the campus.
http://www.umich.edu/~icenter/intlstudents/orgs.html
This is a list of international student club and organization
http://www.umich.edu/~info/inside.html?http://www.umich.edu/~info/hotel.html
This is a list of hotels near the campus
Second, you have to decide whether you are going to live on-campus or off-campus. Let me describe some pros and cons for these two options.
On-campus:
Pros:
All utility are included in the rent, including internet, electricity, water, heat, phone and etc;
You just need to grab the key from the office and move in. No other hassle like opening an account for electricity, applying for home phone.
School bus station is within walking distance. This is especially important for first year student who don’t have a car.
Cons:
Your roommate would be chosen by the school randomly, which might not be a disadvantage for some people.
If you choose to live in co-op, you would be responsible for some housework such as cooking or cleaning.
On-campus house are relatively old and not that well-maintained.
Rent is a little bit expensive comparing to off-campus housing.
Off-campus
Pros:
You get to choose your roommate yourself.
Rent range is more flexible for you to choose.
Off-campus house are more likely to be in a better condition since it is mostly owned by Real Estate Company.
Cons:
You have to apply for internet access, tv cable and most often electricity yourself.
Transportation might not be as convenient as on-campus housing, but depending on your choice.
Some utility might not be included in the rent, which may make the final rent cost of the apt higher than on-campus housing
Hard to decide, huh? Don’t worry. And prepare to move to new place in your second year or even second semester if you are not satisfy with your first apt. That’s the life of graduate student^_*
At the end, I would like to list some factors that you need to consider when renting a house:
1. Transportation. This is really important even if you own a car, cuz parking in central campus during class day is hardly possible. We have two types of transportation here: Blue bus, which is the school bus, is free for all the UM students. http://www.transportation.umich.edu/ Check here for routine and schedule. Another one is AATA bus, which is the city bus in Ann Arbor. UM students can take the bus free by showing their UM ID. Routine and schedule can be found here: www. http://aata.org/index.asp
2. Rent. Who don’t care rent?! Typically, the more it is close to central campus, the more expensive the rent would be. Here is some approximate statistics:
One-bed or studio: $700-1000 per month
Two-bed: $700-1200
Three-bed: $900-1500
3. Facility around the apt. For those who don’t have a car, having a grocery store near your apt is really important. It would be quite a torture to go shopping in winter by foot or by bus.
4. Maintenance. Imagine you get back home at midnight and suddenly find out that you forgot your key in the apt. Horrible! At this time, having a 24-hour maintenance team will be a great advantage.
Posted by chanwei at February 5, 2007 09:07 PM
