Archive for November, 2009

SGA at St Cloud State University to build Off-Campus Student Housing Website

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Last week while browsing through industry news in student housing, I heard that the Student Government Association (SGA) at Saint Cloud State University was planning to begin development on an Off-Campus Housing website for students.  The University Chronicle article (SGA Designs New Website), announced that the Student Government would be rallying students, school and community to create a sorely needed resource for SCSU students. The website will be designed to centralize local housing information and make it more accessible to the approximately 15,000 students that live off-campus.

I reached out to the Chair of Campus Affairs Tom Martin, who is spearheading the project for the SGA, to see if Rent Update might be of service in any way.  After a quick trip to St Cloud, I had the opportunity to sit down for a short meeting with Tom.  We discussed his plans for the project and the challenges that they faced in launching a Rental Listing Service.  Challenges that we have faced as well, while building RentUpdate.com.

Our meeting was productive for both sides as I learned a great deal from Tom’s experiences, and hope I could provide a sliver of wisdom and insight from my own.  I offered Tom and the SGA of St Cloud State University, Rent Update’s assistance in anyway to help them overcome the challenges they face.

We wish them the best, and hope to be of service.

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MN College Students Fend for Themselves to Find Off-Campus Housing

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Recently we completed a study on the availability of online off-campus housing information provided by the colleges and universities that make up the Minnesota Post-Secondary school system. As we all know, off-campus housing is a vital component to a college education, not only for students who do not wish to live on campus, but for smaller schools that do not have on-campus housing options available.

After a few hours of online homework scouring the websites of the 100 Colleges, Universities and private schools in Minnesota…here’s what we found:

MN Online Off-Campus Housing

With almost endless housing information scattered across the web, such a small percentage of dynamic, search-able services provided by Colleges and Universities would be seem understandable. However, after reflecting back on my own personal experience in college, I recall having no clue where to start looking for off-campus housing.  For that matter, up until my sophomore year, I hadn’t even thought about housing, let alone search for it.  It was always just there.

So when it came time to take my college experience off campus, my fellow students and I went to first place we thought of for help, our school. Fortunately for me, I happened to attend one of the two schools in Minnesota (University of MN – Duluth), that actually maintained a list that I could search (Go UMD!).

So if most of us begin our apartment search when moving from on-campus resident life to off-campus, wouldn’t it seem natural that more schools would provide such resources and guidance for their students?

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