""It was the most stressful time in college. Wherever you went, there was stress … You go to the library and you're studying, and there's stress. You couldn't even go home without thinking, is she going to be there?""
Just over three months into freshman year, Megan Kraft, now a UW-Madison junior, signed a lease with her good friend from high school, a girl she met briefly through mutual friends and a girl she met that day. Kraft said she entered a lease despite not knowing much about two of her future roommates because she felt pressured to solidify the next year's living situation since it was already December.
Although the four girls developed a friendship throughout freshman year, within two months of the new leasing period, the roommate dynamics began to shift. Kraft said this created an environment, both in and out of the apartment, plagued by uneasiness and tension. It came to the point where one roommate was not on speaking terms with the other three.
""No one was talking, and if anything was ever said, it was a rude comment and usually that would turn into a fight,"" Kraft said. ""We'd be stressed even more because we should have been studying instead [of arguing].""
Searching for a conveniently located apartment, compatible roommates and satisfactory rental rates can be stressful for students. Kraft and her roommates' situation is just one of many potential repercussions when one rushes into a lease without time to explore options or establish relationships with future roommates.
Yet, just as fall arrives, messages infiltrate student inboxes, urging them to start their search for the following year's leasing period. The same message reverberates throughout campus: look now before it's too late. Thus, the rush begins to sign a year-long lease that will not start until three quarters of a year later.
According to Adam Frey, regional sales and marketing manager for Goldleaf Development, a large Madison-based property owner, searching for housing and needing to decide when to sign a lease is an important factor for a college student's maturation.
""It forces our young adults to make an adult decision, like, ‘Do I want to know for sure that I'm going to be in this two-bedroom 10 months from now or do I wait and see what's still available later on?'"" Frey said. ""It's always that give and take when making tough decisions.""
This fall was UW-Madison freshman Kimmy Callan's first time searching for off-campus housing. She looked during the first week of October because her sister, a UW-Madison senior, told her the housing search in Madison started early. Kimmy had also received multiple emails from property owners and management companies telling her to begin her search, and several of her friends had already signed leases.
""I just kept hearing from people about the high rises. specifically that they're going to go fast so I should sign soon,"" Callan said. ""I knew I had more time if I wanted to sign other places, but once we'd all gone and seen it together, all the other girls liked it a lot too, so we knew if we wanted to live there, at least we'd have to sign soon.""
With five girls she met in the dorms at the beginning of the school year, Kimmy signed a lease for the August 2011-12 leasing period on Oct. 26.
According to UW-Madison junior Nicole Tautges, many area landlords and property management companies make decisions solely with their best interests in mind rather than the students'. She said property owners and managers encouraging students to sign leases so far in advance was unfair and unnecessary.
""Within this environment of haste that the landlords create, students get ripped off because they don't have time to survey their options, which is sort of their fault,"" Tautges said. ""But, we're also very inexperienced renters. We don't have that much experience dealing with legal documents, and the landlords here really take advantage of that.""
She said the general message property owners and managers send is if students choose not to sign early, all apartments will be gone.
According to Danielle Tolzmann, the program coordinator of UW-Madison's listing service, Campus Area Housing, students should not feel pressured to sign in November. Although there was a shortage of housing on campus 25 to 30 years ago, Tolzmann said this is not the case today because of recent development such as the downtown-area high-rise apartments.
""Now there are definitely more quality rentals available than there are students to live in them,"" Tolzmann said. ""Even so, that trend to sign leases in November continues.""
UW-Madison senior Ben Morris is an exception to this November rule, unaffected by the anticipation from students as well as management companies and property owners. Morris said it is unnecessary for students to search for housing and sign a lease more than two months before moving to a new place. While studying in Germany his junior year, he did not think about his housing situation for the following year until mid-summer.
""There were hundreds of options. This was early July on Craigslist, [when I searched] for 20 minutes."" Morris said. ""It just reinforced my thought that, ‘This is a college town, there are thousands of students moving out every year, every semester.' You're not going to have a hard time finding housing. It's there.""
Morris was happy with his apartment, location, roommates and rental rate and said he would not change anything about his current living situation or how he went about searching for it.
In addition to Morris, others saw the practicality of waiting to sign a lease until later in the year. UW-Madison junior Elise Sutter, along with the girls she chose to live with, focused on classes first semester of their freshmen year instead of searching for housing and signing a lease.
""Some of my friends had signed in October, and honestly I thought it was kind of ridiculous because I didn't even know that was something I had to start thinking about yet,"" Sutter said.
After winter break, Sutter and her future roommates found an apartment off Langdon on Howard Place, signing their lease in January. Sutter said waiting did not cause more stress but rather helped them narrow their options. Another perk to waiting, she said, was that their landlord lowered the monthly rental rate by $200.
While some waited to sign until just after Christmas break or sometime during second semester or summer, a typical perception among students is that the best apartments went first. Frey, who has worked for Goldleaf for nearly nine years, said every year he witnesses the largest rush to sign leases in mid-November and sees the most popular apartments leased first.
""Last year, we signed almost half our apartments [in the campus area] in the first 15 days, so November 15 through the 30,"" Frey said. ""We signed 248 units in November alone. That's almost 20 apartments a day, that's fast.""
According to Tolzmann, while some apartments tend to lease quicker, not all properties are even on the market yet, so early lease signers limit their options. She said students could benefit from waiting until after winter break because many property management companies and landlords became more willing to negotiate later into the lease signing period.
""As early as December is when we start hearing from property owners to lower the published rent rate, but, generally speaking, February into March is when we really start hearing that they need to lower their rates on the rentals they may still have available,"" she said.
Even if students are not worried about rental rates, Morris said they should not believe they would lose the opportunity to find their ideal living situation if they chose not to sign in November.
""You can find exactly what you want in a short amount of time because there's so much,"" Morris said. ""We're in a large college town…There's plenty of property open, and it's not all signed away in November. In fact, I would be really surprised if the majority of it were. There's always something. Always.""
