Downtown student housing in high demand

Adam Smeltz

- asmeltz@centredaily.com

UNIVERSITY PARK — Think of Penn State like a giant lung. The place inhales applications — just about 100,000 a year now — and exhales students, filling State College with some 42,000 souls a year.

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But with applications and University Park enrollment now at all-time highs, anyone looking to rent an apartment in or near State College — not just students — could be in for a minor tussle.

All that metaphorical exhaling has inflated market demand, knocking down vacancy rates to perhaps their lowest level in a decade, landlord observations suggest.

“There’s something for everybody in State College. It just takes a little bit of looking,” said Helen Bannon, property manager at Lions Gate Apartments on Waupelani Drive.

She and other real-estate observers said the conditions run in cycles. The rental market in the Centre Region hasn’t been this hot since the mid-1990s, when most apartments — downtown apartments, at least — were rented by late December for the next academic year.

Robin Homan, property manager at Heritage Realty Group, said she knows of no rental management or ownership group that has vacancy rates of more than 3 percent.

That’s down from 5 percent in late 2006 and 7 percent to 10 percent in the few years prior. The region counts about 16,000 rental units, some 9,000 of them within borough limits.

What hasn’t changed is the popularity of the downtown. Apartments there still fill up first. In fact, many of them already appear to be rented for fall 2008.

The application and lease-signing season begins in earnest, especially for undergraduates, in October and November.

“I find if they can’t go downtown, they go to the next step,” often a newer suburban complex such as those on Vairo Boulevard, in Patton Township, Loretta Doss said. She helps run the Off-Campus Living office on campus and advises the Off-Campus Student Union.

For those still on the apartment hunt, the university has organized its annual housing fair for Saturday, Jan. 26. The event, scheduled for 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Alumni Hall at the HUBRobeson Center, includes representatives and displays from a variety of apartment complexes, including several downtown buildings.

“If everything was gone, we wouldn’t still be having folks here at the housing fair,” Doss said.

She and other veterans of the rental-housing market offered several tips to apartment hunters. Among them:

•Start looking early. Downtown apartments and neighborhoods closest to the downtown tend to be prime digs for undergraduates. By this point in the season, would-be tenants will find more availability farther from the downtown, including on Vairo Boulevard and in the Waupelani Drive area.

Get outside the downtown, and you may find that the lease-application and signing season will run into the early summer.

•Apartment-hunting season for graduate students and other adults tends to be more of a year-round affair.

“As you get farther out — we tend to attract the older students, the graduate students,” Bannon said. “You can still find plentiful housing unless you want to be right downtown.”

•Make use of the Internet, Google searches and Web sites including the Collegian Online ( www.psucollegian.com),StateCollege.com, Centre Daily.com and craigslist.com. The Penn State office for off-campus living also maintains a site: www.sa.psu.edu/ocl..Establish www.sa.psu.edu/ocl..Establish www.sa.psu.edu/ocl..Establish www.sa.psu.edu/ocl..Establish www.sa.psu.edu/ocl..Establish •www.sa.psu.edu/ocl..Establish

in advance a general sense of what you’re looking for. Know whether you want a room or a whole apartment.

Also pay attention to detail. Ask whether a rental rate includes furnishings and utilities, and whether the lease will allow pets or involve other amenities.

•Know the terms of the lease, and have a solid grasp on exactly who is responsible— legally— for fulfilling its terms. Ask the landlord to explain any jargon.

•Understand that a lease is a legal and binding obligation. Don’t sign one until you’re certain it’s what you want.

Adam Smeltz can be reached at 231-4631.