Some students signed leases for the 2016-17 school year before even doing a load of laundry in their current apartments.

Students looking for off-campus apartments in advance is not uncommon, but the timing of the housing search this year is even more startling, said Elin Riggs, director of Off-Campus and Commuter Services of Syracuse University.

“This year is, in my mind, very, very early,” Riggs said. “It’s unusual for the field of off-campus housing.”

The timeline has shifted drastically from just 10 years ago, when students could afford to wait until there was snow on the ground to start seriously considering where to live. As some students get pushed off-campus due to increases in enrollment at SU, it forces others to address their housing concerns shortly after stepping foot in Syracuse for the new school year.

At Emerson College in Boston, where Riggs worked previously, students perused off-campus options in April, while students at Boston College generally searched in October and November, she said. Never August.

Landlords are the other side of this equation, and they have sometimes had to adapt to the hastening timeline of students looking to rent.

Ben Tupper, of Tupper Property Management LLC., said students looking for housing earlier has been a steadily changing process since he graduated from SU in 1992. At that time, no one even thought of looking until after Winter Break, he said. Six years later, in 1998, “lo and behold,” he said, “everyone was looking in October and November.”

Now, in 2015, Tupper said he received calls as early as June.

Part of the reason for this shift, he said, is because the university has seen growth in its enrollment. As the university attempts to provide on-campus housing for its freshmen and sophomores, upper-class students find themselves looking for off-campus options.

“Rental season is 100 percent driven by students,” Tupper added. Landlords, while businesspeople, respond to the customer’s demands, he said.

Tupper Property Management owns about 65 houses — or 120 units — and has nearly half of those already leased for next year, he said.

One of those potential customers, Emily Magnifico, is currently searching for off-campus housing arrangements. Magnifico, a sophomore magazine journalism and anthropology major, said she “sort of expected to look this early.”

Older students who have gone through the process told her to begin searching in August, she added.

“Freshman year is a time of change,” she said. “Then coming back is odd because you have to know who you want to live with.”

When looking for housing, Taylyn Washington-Harmon, a senior magazine journalism major, said she and her former roommates started searching in October of her sophomore year.

As for now, she said, “that’s a little disturbing that people are already signing leases so soon.”

But there’s more to the search than just finding an available house or apartment.

Riggs, the director of Off-Campus and Commuter Services, said the key for students, no matter when they choose to pursue off-campus housing, is to do their homework. This includes answering questions such as with whom one wants to live, how much each person wants to and can spend, as well as how to budget for those expenses.

Looking for an apartment should be fun, she said. But it can turn stressful when the question of money gets addressed, she added.

“Students don’t talk about that, because no one likes to talk about money,” she said.

The Office of Off-Campus and Commuter Services, which used to offer an apartment housing fair a few weeks into the semester, no longer does so.

“I don’t want to feed into the mayhem,” Riggs said. “We feel like we’ve put enough info in there to help students make good decisions.”

What the office does offer is a guide for students to follow that outlines steps to take before signing a lease.

Students sometimes pass down apartments to other students, but they also use the various housing websites.

One such site is cuserealestate.com. Cuse Real Estate owns about 130 units and is in the process of constructing a new apartment building at 712-714 E. Fayette St., said Cheryl Sardella, a representative of the company. Sardella said Cuse Real Estate encourages students to talk to their parents and actually read the lease.

That sentiment is shared by Riggs, who consistently emphasized being informed.

“The bottom line is that you have to do your homework,” she said.

Published on September 15, 2015 at 11:28 pm

Contact Danny: dmantoot@syr.edu