First off, I want to reiterate that USC is a first class school. Besides it’s Back to Back National Champions Football Team, we also have incredible students. The Class of 2008’s average SAT scores surpassed UC Berkeley’s and UCLA’s. This is a testament to the talent that USC is attracting as it becomes further elevated in the national college rankings.
However, one of the few negative things about going to the University of Southern California is the housing situation. USC has a relatively small campus . The University Park Campus which is the main undergraduate campus is enclosed in an area that has a perimeter of 2 miles. Within that campus, are few on campus dorms and apartments. The newest ones being Parkside International Suites and the older ones being New/North Residential Halls and Marks Tower and Pardee Tower. All of which are filled with great people that help contribute to a great collegiate dorm atmosphere. Sadly though, because of the housing shortages, housing is only guaranteed for Freshman. So, after the 1st year, you have to enter a lottery to try to secure on campus housing or university housing. In 2005, a number of 1200 couldn’t help me and and my roommates secure housing. The numbers went all the way to around 6,000, if I remember correctly. One of the main reasons for that is that Webb Tower, an apartment building, was being closed for renovation.
So 7 of the guys that I decided to room with next year and I had to start apartment hunting. That number would trickle down to 2 other guys as we had to break apart in order to secure good housing. This is just one of the tragedies of being rookies in the housing search.
First Stop
Conquest Housing is a company that owns a bunch of apartment buildings in the USC area. Their website, conquest.com, also shows that they serve the Santa Barbara Area too. The apartments that they offer are very much nicer than the apartments around the USC area. They are mostly located north of campus. This is key, because the North of campus is where most students live and is probably the nicer parts of the neighborhood. East of campus is where most of the local residents live. However, there are pretty nice apartments to the east of campus but those are just across the street and very difficult to obtain. When most people are deciding whether to choose USC, they worry about the neighborhood and the fact that it is located in the “ghetto.” It’s really not as bad as people say. While, it is in the “ghetto”, you can still walk around at 2 in the morning with your friends from a party. Notice the key phrase, “with your friends.” By using common sense like not walking alone at night or leaving your car door unlocked to not counting your cash in the street, you can usually avoid most crimes. The Department of Public Safety at USC also releases crime statistics and they are consistently lower than those at other schools. This is probably because of the emphasis on safety because we are located in a renown high crime area. But lets get back to apartment searching, Conquest Housing allows you to make your top ten choices and then on a given set date, you have to log onto their server and submit it. It becomes a contest of who can send in their requests faster than all of the other people submitting it. Even with alarms set and everything pre-entered onto the website, we couldn’t secure housing through Conquest.
Craigslist.com
Craigslist.com was a useful site to look for apartments in the area. Most of the posters on craigslist were posting for houses and apartments in the East side. These were noticeably cheaper than the northern apartments. We took a look at a house on the east side but decided that it was much too far from campus. A website called housingmaps.com uses google maps to map out Craigslist listings. It’s pretty neat, check it out.
Housing4Students.com
USC also works with housing4students.com to offer you a lot of postings for apartments around USC. Most of these are in the downtown area. The Medici Apartments in downtown are very popular. They are luxury apartments that you can rent for about the same price of a more run down apartment near campus. However, it means a commute from downtown to school everyday. This is an estimated 15 minute commute.
Driving around the Area to search
Perhaps the most effective way to search for an apartment is just to drive around the immediate neighborhood. Many apartments have open houses where you can look at what you’re getting right away and some places even allow you to sign the lease on the spot if you’d like the place.
We found the apartment we will be staying in this way. However, we did do our research to make sure we were getting a good price and etc.
Fair Prices
Average price of a two bedroom apartment on the North Side of campus would run you about $1,700/ mo. East and South Sides would run you an average of $1,400. I rarely see apartments posted for the West Side of Campus. This is mostly businesses and does not really have that much student housing. Although there are some that are very close.
Lease Agreements
Most landlords require that you sign a 12 month lease. Conquest housing has an 11 month lease but they are also pricier when looking at monthly rent. If you are dealing with a private and unaffiliated landlord, they can be flexible with the lease. However, this is dependent on what time of the year you are looking. In April, the peak of the housing panic, you are less likely to be able to successful negotiate a favorable lease. April is when all the freshman find out if they have housing for next year or not. They all panic to find housing when they discover they don’t have a high lottery number so they start looking everywhere. I discovered that after May, when school ended, that there were still available housing in the North of campus, the good area. However, the early bird catches the worm still applies as the best units and best prices are usually all snapped up by May. The West Campus apartments and houses can be considered plentiful as even now in July, there are still postings for them in Craigslist.
Its whats on the inside that counts
Many apartments around the USC area don’t look very nice on the outside. However, it is often the case that the older and more run down the outside looks, the bigger and more roomy the inside is. I think this is because older apartments use to be bigger because back in the day, developers didn’t try to cramp in as many units into a lot as they do today. So at least in the USC area, don’t judge an apartment by its outer appearance; go inside and take a look.
