Finding an Off-Campus Apartment
When you are considering where you want to live as a student at DePaul, there is a lot to consider. If you live close enough already then you could commute to campus, and there is a large chunk of students who choose to do that. However, if you do not live close enough you have to choose between living on or off campus. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but this post is going to focus on living off campus and some tips on how to find a place that you will love. I went through this process last year and I am very happy with my off-campus apartment, so I want to share what I have learned from my experience!
I am going to start this post off with what I believe to be the most important and most effective tip you can utilize: working with a realtor. I did not even think of this as a possibility when I was first starting my search, and I only learned about it from a Facebook post that my mom had sent to me. The company we worked with is called Fulton Grace and I highly recommend checking out their website and contacting one of their realtors if you are currently searching. Within the city, there are a ton of companies that pay realtors to advertise and show the apartments that they own, and so this results in a huge amount of apartments that are only available to you if you work with one of these realtors.
My initial strategy was looking on sites like Apartments.com and Zillow, and I did not have much luck. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of great options on these sites and they have features that make searching very easy and efficient, but to me the difference with the realtor was almost night and day. When I got the contact info for the realtor we worked with, I sent him an email that outlined my situation. I made sure to tell him about how many people I was planning to live with and all the specifications we wanted in an apartment.
He responded and had a few more questions for me and created an outline for what we were looking for. From there, he did the searching and reached out to me when he had found multiple viable options. He also scheduled all of the tours and made that process very easy. I had been through some frustrating situations trying to schedule tours myself with apartments I had found on various sites, so it’s safe to say I was very happy to not have to deal with that and instead just tell him when I was available.
On top of working with the realtor, my roommates and I all still made sure to continue our own searching on various websites and set up a few tours here and there to maximize our options. After our own searching and working with our realtor, unsurprisingly all of the best options came from working with the realtor and we were very happy to have a few solid choices to pick from towards the end of the school year. Being able to have access to all the apartments that are not publicly advertised and are only shown by the realtors gave us such an advantage and having someone who was experienced facilitate all of the communication and scheduling made the process significantly less stressful. Overall, I would highly recommend both reaching out to a realtor and looking on a few websites to maximize your options!
~ Jeff