The pressure many University students feel to sign a lease now for housing next year is a significant issue, Student Council President Matt Schrimper said, and as a result, Council is looking into collaborating with Charlottesville City Council and local landlords to bring about reform.
Council also hopes to work in conjunction with the University to address concerns about early lease signing, Schrimper said. He noted that the University continues to move its signing date for on-Grounds housing earlier each year, acknowledging that it is in a “tough position” because of competition from off-Grounds housing. Pressure from multiple sources to finalize housing arrangements for the next academic year as early as October affects all students, but primarily hurts first-year students, Schrimper said.
“First-years are not prepared to sign a lease a month after arriving at the University,” Schrimper said. “Even if they are prepared, the likelihood is that they haven’t found a group of friends [they really want to] live with.”
Third-year Commerce student Betsy Frentz, for example, said “it’s pretty ridiculous” to have to sign leases so early, especially for first-year students. She noted that she has heard stories about students who had signed housing leases early in the year and ended up not wanting to live together by spring.
Third-year College student Mike Bradshaw, meanwhile, also said the early housing process stressed him out as a first-year student because he was just settling into college. He noted that first-year students usually do not know all of their housing options because they “don’t have a feel for what’s out there,” adding that it is nice for them to have a couple extra months so they can see more of the off-Grounds housing.
With stories like those in mind, Schrimper said Council has created a three-year campaign designed to combat the pressure students feel to sign leases early into the school year. The first two years of the program will focus on educating students regarding their housing options, he said. In the third year, the campaign will ask students not to sign leases in October. The program, called “Don’t Sign It,” is in its first year.
“We don’t have dramatic expectations [for the campaign], but it’s the responsible thing for us to do,” Schrimper said.
Student Council’s representative to City Council, Colin Hood, meanwhile, said Council will propose a resolution to City Council Monday night regarding housing. He said the idea came from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin—Madison, where students lobbied their city councils to pass an ordinance that would require a 90-day waiting period after a lease began before landlords could begin advertising for new tenants for the next year or ask the current tenants to re-sign their leases.
Hood noted that if Council passed the ordinance, students could see tangible results next year.
Wade Apartments General Manager Wade Tremblay, though, said in recent years, the increased use of early lease agreements cannot just be attributed to real estate managers, noting that students also play a role in the issue. He attributed the pressure to sign early to peer pressure, adding that about two-thirds of University students live off Grounds and want to live in the same properties occupied by their peers.
“Fifteen years ago, most of us didn’t begin marketing our apartments for the following year until after Christmas, largely because students didn’t start asking until after Christmas,” he said. “Then we started to see students nibbling. They wanted to lock things up.”
Early signing is typical of college towns because leases are taken fairly quickly, University Heights Leasing Consultant Trevor Hall said.
First-year graduate Commerce student Karishma Desouza, who also attended the University for her undergraduate degree, said she was glad to have signed a lease early so that she could concentrate on job interviews and school work.
“It’s the free enterprise system working exactly as it’s supposed to,” she said. “The important thing for us it that we respond to the marketplace, and students are the marketplace, and they want to secure housing earlier.”
Schrimper, however, said the pressure to sign early also comes from the rental companies in the area. He also noted that this is an issue that Student Council has tried to address for several years.
“We’ve asked the landlords to move back [the signing] date, but it’s never productive,” he said.
University Off-Grounds Housing Manager Vicki Hawes said the pressure is two-fold.
“It’s the chicken or the egg thing,” Hawes explained. “There’s a lot of peer pressure ... and the advertising is saying, ‘Sign your lease now.’ It’s a feeding frenzy.”
Second-year College student Rachel Neurohr said although she has not signed a lease yet, she has already started looking for off-Grounds housing. She said she feels pressure from many sources to find housing soon, citing the housing supplement published in The Cavalier Daily and the housing fair held in Newcomb Plaza Wednesday as examples of housing being pushed to the forefront of students’ thoughts.
This early signing ritual is a “self-reinforcing cycle,” according to Commerce Prof. John Wheeler: Students want to sign leases earlier to beat the rush, and landlords are willing to let students sign earlier. Thus, he said, the issue continues to compound itself every year.
He also said, however, that there can be advantages to signing a lease early in the school year.
“With inflation, rent is [going to] go nowhere but up,” he said, adding that if students can lock in the current prices before inflation is factored in, the cost will be cheaper.
Wheeler also noted that student-led efforts to bring about change within the student population can be difficult to implement. He said the concept of a tenants’ union, designed to support students renting property, has succeeded at other higher education institutions but has never been implemented successfully at the University.
“The trouble is that students through the year have tried to bind together and have a students’ union to counterbalance the landlords’ economic power, but it’s never gotten very far at U.Va.,” he said. “Students just don’t ever seem to cooperate very well, organize and stick to it.”
Furthermore, Wheeler said, Council’s Monday proposal may face legal difficulties. He noted that the commonwealth’s Dillon rule prohibits localities in Virginia from doing anything that the General Assembly has not specifically told them they can do. He added that even though City Council might support such an ordinance, if it does not have that authority specifically granted to it by the General Assembly, the students would have to take their case before the General Assembly to persuade lawmakers to grant City Council the power to pass the ordinance.
“It’s a great idea, but it’s maybe a long road and one that’s very hard for students to follow through with,” Wheeler said, noting that changing a state law often takes several years.
He also noted, however, that the University is often able to see laws passed in the General Assembly that are beneficial to its constituents.
Hood said the city’s attorney is currently looking into the legality of the proposed ordinance,
Regardless of the outcome of Monday’s proposal, Wheeler said University students have other options. He cited a practice often used in commercial real estate in which renters agree to pay a certain amount to the landlord in exchange for the landlord not leasing the property for a certain period of time. Renters are free to consider other options during this time and at the end of the timeframe are not obligated to sign a lease but still have the option available.
Wheeler said while he has never seen this practice used in the student housing market, it is a legal option.
The concerns, moreover, could resolve themselves to some degree. While many students said they feel pressure to sign leases early in the fall to secure their preferred housing, a number of realtors agreed that it was possible to find housing in the spring, as well. Hawes noted that 4,000 bedrooms have been added to the housing market over the last four to five years within a 1.5-mile radius of the Rotunda.
“The market is going to settle out a little bit because we’ve added so many bedrooms recently,” she noted.
Tremblay, meanwhile, said this surplus of apartments is a benefit to students, noting that “to a degree, it’s a buyer’s market.”
He added that the housing that tends to be leased first are units that house four or more students. These units tend to attract undergraduates, who usually sign earlier than graduate students. Many graduate students do not know whether they will attend the University until the spring or summer months, at which point they will look for available housing, Tremblay said.
“One thing that’s important to understand ... is to make sure that all the students understand this is not a conspiracy,” he said. “Really, this is a response to their demands. If they want to sign early, that’s their decision. If they want to wait, there’s plenty of housing.”
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