The housing dilemma: Move off campus or stay on?

With spring semester underway, so is the decision of where you may want to live for the upcoming school year. Most leases for off-campus houses or apartments either start in June or August if you live in a college town. If you want to live on campus, getting your application and application fee will be due this semester.

While you debate where you want to live next school year, here are seven things you should consider.

Rent

With living on campus, your rent is essentially due twice a year: once in the fall and once in the spring semester, unless you sign up for a payment plan.

On the flip side, your rent is due every month if you live off campus. Recent Bemidji State University graduate Ashleigh Weidner, saved a lot of money living off campus because “the costs of room, board and dining is almost the same as tuition at BSU.”

Extra costs

Garbage, water, WiFi, cable, heating and other utilities all have to be considered. When you choose to live on campus, essential costs like water and heating — and even some perks like WiFi and cable — are included. Whereas your landlord for an off-campus house may have you pay extra for electricity, water and heating.

RELATED: Students locking into leases for next year’s housing

Proximity to classes and parking

There’s no clear winner with this one. Some off-campus housing might be closer to the academic building than dorms.

Yet, other off-campus housing might require you to commute to campus — costing gas money — and your campus may require a parking permit, which also costs money.

Decorating

RAs make a verity of Door Decs throughout the school year and put them on their residents doors to make their floors seem more festive. Photo Courtesy of Morgan Bartlett.

Typically speaking, being able to paint your dorm is off the table, whereas you might be able to put a deposit down with your landlord to let you paint your apartment. Also, you may have more freedom in regards of the types of posters or other decorations you put up in your apartment compared to a dorm room.

However, resident assistant typically decorate their resident doors with door decorations, also known as door decs. And some RAs may decorate their floors.

Your dating life

At some schools, there’s a limit to a number of nights your significant other can spend the night in your dorm room. Also while living in the dorms, you have to arrange with your roommate to have some alone time with your significant other.

Quiet Hours

College dorms have a certain time of night when your room doors have to be closed, your TVs have to be turned down and you have to respect the fact that others may have to head to bed early — and RAs have to enforce this.

Yet, living off of campus, there isn’t the same rule per say. Although cities do have a noise ordnance, typically, you may have slightly more freedom. However, if your house is too loud, you could face a ticket from your local police department.

RELATED: 3 things to consider when choosing housing

Security

College campuses usually have a higher level of expectation of making the campus as a whole safer. This typically means that your campus has a campus police department to ensure that there’s less trouble on campus and to take care of any trouble that arises. This means that with your dorm room fees are aiding in adding, indirectly, some extra security.

With living off campus, the security that you have may be limited to the locks on your door.

Joe Vito Moubry is a business student at Vermilion Community College. He attended Bemidji State University for a writing degree and a liberal studies degree. Follow him on Twitter @ByJoeVito.

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