Off-campus housing in the Syracuse University area has been leasing at a rapid pace, leading to the joy of many landlords and dismay of some students.

This semester has been the fastest selling year for Ben Tupper, the manager of Tupper Property Management, he said. The company has leased to more than 5,000 Syracuse University and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students during the last 15 years, according to his website.

“I just bought out another landlord who had seven houses, which had about 12 apartments and he had only sold one,” Tupper said. “In a week and a half, they were sold out.”

Tupper said this was the fastest year ever for him, by “leaps and bounds.” This may be due to a SU Parents Facebook page where he received many positive reviews praising him as a landlord, he said.

For students like Jay Alter, a sophomore broadcast digital journalism major, he said he’s disappointed that he did not start searching for housing earlier, because of how fast they’ve been selling.

“I started looking for housing in mid-September because a bunch of my friends were telling me, ‘Oh, I’m living here,’” Alter said. “I was planning on just doing it in the spring, that’s what made sense to me.”

But some housing could still be available in the spring, said Elin Riggs, director of SU’s Off-campus and Commuter Services program — it just might not be what or where students want.

It’s typical for students to begin looking in the first few months of school, Riggs said.

“It’s the nature of housing. When students know they want to be somewhere, they look a year ahead of time,” said Riggs. “Your friends are looking and saying ‘if you don’t look now, you won’t get a place’. So students think ‘if I don’t find something now, I’m never going to get something for the fall.”

But Riggs said it hasn’t always been this way. Students used to start looking for housing in the early spring semester, but it was pushed up to accommodate the rising number of students who wanted to live off-campus.

Throughout the years, students have started looking for housing earlier and landlords started to make their properties available more in advance.

Riggs said another factor is where those properties are located. Properties farther from campus, such as those on Westcott Street and East Genesee Street may still be available, she said.

There are also more housing options available than in the past, Riggs said. Facilities like Campus West apartments and Copper Beach Commons and independently leased apartments and houses around the area give students more options for off-campus housing.

Park Point still has apartments available for next year, said Marybeth Gayne, the general manager of Park Point.

Gayne said they are ahead of schedule in terms of how many apartments are left, but they won’t be leasing to SU students through the lottery this year.

University Village apartments don’t typically fill up until the spring, said Rahmin Azria, the community manager at University Village Apartments. He said UV follows the same schedule as other off-campus facilities and usually has spaces available into the spring semester.

UV often has issues filling all of their beds, he said. They have 432 beds that they are only allowed to rent out to SU students and they have to verify enrollment with the university before leasing, he said.

Azria said this restriction does not apply to other leasing options, which means they can fill up quicker by renting out to Le Moyne students, those attending other schools or those independent of a university altogether.

Published on October 24, 2013 at 1:29 am

Contact Caroline: cstrange@syr.edu