There are probably a lot of you out there who are starting to look around for housing opportunities outside of the dorms or frats/sororities. There are a lot of different directions you can go, so I wanted to open up the comment boards a bit for people to talk about the places they rent from and their landlord situations. From my experience, it seems that the fewer properties a landlord has the better quality of service you are going to get. This contradicted my earlier assumption that a company who owns more properties has more staff and is more professional, but that’s usually not the case. Also make sure to make copies and document everything, you don’t want the Zaki Alawis (Michigan Rental, check facebook ‘fan club’) of Ann Arbor taking pre-existing damages off of your security deposit.

In the end we’re just college kids and big dollar signs to these people. We move in and move out, they keep the property (unless we burn it down). Make sure you address any and all problems and get it sorted out before you sign a lease (you might want to actually read it too… or have daddy do it, it’s all good). With that being said, I wish you all good luck in finding a place and an “I told you so” when Prime or Wilson White takes a week to fix your heating.