Students make use of Web to find apartments and roommates

By My Yen La
Daily Bruin Contributor

Students shop online for various products these days: books,
concert tickets and increasingly, apartments and roommates.

The decline in apartment vacancies and relative ease of finding
apartments online prompts many students to use Web databases to
browse for potential roommates and housing.

For some people, long gone are the days when their
bulletin-board ads drown in a conglomeration of other rental ads or
when phone number stubs get lost in the abyss of their pockets.

Some students have turned to the plethora of more user-friendly
housing, apartment and roommate databases, including one on the
UCLA housing Web site that is available only to UCLA students and
staff.

“My initial response is more information with less
effort,” said Marisa Evans, a third-year neuroscience
student. “You can just sit there and look through a
database.”

The UCLA database currently contains about 30 vacant listings
and over 150 roommate needed and roommate available listings.

Search sites continually add listings as more tenants use the
Internet to advertise apartment complexes and people spend more
time seeking housing.

Homestore.com, one of the biggest housing search Internet sites,
has about 6.5 million listings in 6,000 cities according to Media
Metrix, a company that tracks Internet sites.

About 681,000 unique users ““ 25 percent of which were
students ““ surfed this site in January. For the company, this
is a 53 percent increase from December ““ a typically a slow
month.

Yet for those who tried finding an apartment during winter break
““ such as second-year undeclared student Kyung Jeon, the
Internet proved to be an extremely convenient source.

“We had to do it online because my roommate lived in New
Jersey and I live in San Jose,” Jeon said.

Jeon added that his other roommate, who lives in the Los Angeles
area, was able to visit the apartments that Jeon and his roommate
from New Jersey found.

But for other students, like third-year chemistry student Akram
Boukai, some databases are not necessarily as extensive as they
appear.

“I found a lot of places but I think the best thing for me
was looking around Westwood by car and by foot,” Boukai said.
“Some of the apartments I found, they weren’t all
necessarily in Westwood.”

But options to narrow the search by showing only apartments in a
desired area or near a college exist. One can also find sites, like
Westside Rentals, specifically tailored to serve a particular city
or area. Some of these sites charge a fee for their use. Westside
Rentals, for example, charges $60 for 60 days. In general, prices
range from $20 to $70, and some are free.

Many sites can also filter the listings of apartments that offer
a specific price range, type of housing, and services and
utilities, such as laundry facilities.

Many of them have evolved from just showing their databases.
Sites such as Homestore.com and Apartments.com also offer viewers a
myriad of articles and features to help users with their move.
Features and article issues include apartment checklists, finding
the right apartment and legal matters.

Unique features also include price comparisons in different
cities and links to moving, insurance and other sites that may be
helpful to renters.

More interactive features include pictures and 360-degree tours
of apartments, offered by the company Rent Net that was recently
acquired by Homestore.com.

Also, many of the housing and apartment search sites have links
to roommate search sites, and the industry of roommate search sites
may be expanding. According to Katharine Kamminga, the president of
Roommate

Locator.com, more people use roommate search sites like hers as
the price and demand for apartments continues to rise.

“It went from nothing to 3,000 users a day,”
Kamminga said. “The field is growing because the housing
market is growing tight.”

For some roommate services, the Internet allowed them to expand
their services and lower their prices significantly.

“The Internet has definitely changed the business,”
said Chris Demassa, the owner of Roommate Express. “We can
never be national without the Internet.”

Like many apartment and housing sites, roommate database sites
have articles that may help roommate-finders. One can also break
down the number of matches by creating a profile of topics that
answers questions regarding things such as smoking, pets, religion
and sexual orientation. On some sites, potential roommates can also
submit pictures of themselves.

Many sites allow people to place an ad for free. But to receive
contact information about potential roommates, some users must
subscribe.

Web sites also offer special membership privileges. For example,
people must register with Roommate Express to see its database. The
advantage, according to Demassa, is that Roommate Express gives its
members a personality test in order to find the best roommate
matches for people.

“The point is you get exposed to them somehow,”
Demassa said. He added that people are more likely to find a closer
match this way instead of having to find out later that they may
not like living with their roommates.

Fourth-year economics student Kim Nibbe however, is not sure
whether she would pay to use a database, even if there is a way she
can find a match and do less work in finding one.

“You can’t figure out how courteous the person
is,” Nibbe said. “Also, people lie.”

Rather than finding her roommates through non-UCLA databases,
Nibbe found her roommates through the university’s free
housing Web site and likes the living arrangements with her
roommates. However, she found that sometimes by the time she called
the contact about an ad, the vacancy was already taken.

Evans, like Nibbe, also found her roommates through the UCLA
housing Web site. Although she did find the Web site to be useful,
one disadvantage she saw was that the database was not extensive
enough.

But she said she felt safer finding roommates through UCLA and
found it to be more helpful.

“If you’re going to go outside of the college Web
site, it’s harder to find people with the same
situation,” Evans said. “It’s hard to find
somewhere where a college student will be able to stay.”

As for roommate safety, both Demassa and Kamminga stressed that
roommate seekers should be careful of the information given to
other browsers when making an online profile and meeting a
potential roommate.

“Don’t give information about where you live,”
Demassa said. “Don’t give out unnecessary
information.”

Kamminga also advised not giving out personal phone numbers and
creating a separate e-mail account using Internet mail or the free
e-mail offered through RoommateLocator.com for safety reasons and
to avoid solicitation.

“When you put your e-mail out there, it is public,”
Kamminga said. “People do approach other people.”

Demassa recommends meeting potential roommates in a public
place. He added that if a searcher decides to obtain a reference, a
past roommate would be best.