Rental Guide: Websites, social media helps students find roommates, housing

As print classified ads in newspapers become increasingly obsolete, students can scroll online to find a new pad on Pitt’s campus.

While many turn to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, others use Craigslist to find housing or roommates. And one group of students is utilizing Twitter and WordPress to consolidate housing listings for other students.

Kristy Chen, a junior majoring in economics, is one member of a six-person team known as “Nomad Nation” that created CampusNoobs.com, a website that aims to hook students up with off-campus housing options at Pitt. The five other students who operate the website declined to give their names and prefer to be known as “the Nomad Nation.”

The students launched the website in December, and since then, it’s linked several students with a roommate or housing option and gained more than 100 followers on its Twitter page.

Chen said the students are currently compiling listings to establish a one-stop shop for off-campus options. The website is currently undergoing  trial run to see how students use it, she said, so the team can tailor the site to students’ needs.

The website provides listings of available rentals and sublets off-campus at Pitt, as well as student posts seeking housing. Campus Noobs’ Twitter provides live updates of the newest listings. Chen said the creators also plan to add a feature for students to create renter reviews for each listing to encourage transparency among landlords.

“This forces landlords to be more responsible because it creates natural competition, whereas normally whoever got their word out the most had the most audience. It’s safer for students and a better option,” she said.

On the site, the creators operate under the name “The Nomad.” Chen said the alias directs the focus to the service, rather than the students who created it.

“The Nomad represents everyone, everyone who is looking for something in life, everyone who is learning, traveling on a voyage, the journey of life,” she said. “It’s supposed to be representative of an idea, of a service that we want to provide versus a single person or a name.”

Chen said Campus Noobs does not make any money for the students that work on it.

“This whole project is focused on providing the service to the students. We’re not looking to make any money from it,” she said. “Maybe in the future, even if we do, I would think that we would want to use that money for a charitable cause.”

If the the site is successful at Pitt, Chen said the team could expand Campus Noobs to other campuses.

“If it works at Pitt, we should definitely do it for other campuses, because I know [housing issues are] a common problem that happens for every campus around here,” she said. “It’s not just us.”

Chen found housing through Pitt’s off-campus housing website during her sophomore year.

She said that while social media sites such as Facebook allow students to discover potential roommates’ interests, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to determine a roommates’ living habits from an online profile.

“The downside is that [users] can find out too much about you before they make a decision,” she said. “The upside is that you can get to know [users] a little bit more if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Other students have still chosen to pursue less traditional routes toward finding housing over the Internet.

Jacqueline Arvay, a sophomore majoring in psychology, has used Facebook to find housing at Pitt.

She used a Facebook group called “Summer at Pitt” to sublet housing for last summer. Last semester, after she and her roommate experienced a conflict, she was looking for someone to fill the second bedroom in her apartment. She found her current roommate on Facebook.

“I felt like it was almost too late to get a roommate, but luckily I found her on Facebook, too,” Arvay said.

She said that finding housing through social media is a positive experience, but students might not have a wide selection.

“You don’t have that many choices online. You can’t venture out and see what’s actually out in the open,” she said. 

Emma Hartman, a sophomore majoring in nursing, is currently in the process of finding someone to sublet her room over the summer through the “University of Pittsburgh Class of 2016” Facebook group. She posted in the group and several people are planning to come look at her bedroom. She only knew one of those people prior to posting.

She also found roommates for next semester through the “Pitt Nursing” Facebook group and found the house she currently lives in through the classified ads section of The Pitt News.

“If you don’t know people you want to live with, then going through Facebook is probably the easiest, because you can find some of your peers that you may or may not know. If you wanted to go through news or the paper version, you have to know who you want to live with,” she said.

Other students have not met luck in their online housing search ventures.

Tessa Kerecman, a sophomore pre-medicine student, tried unsuccessfully to find a two-bedroom apartment on Craigslist for next semester. She and her roommate eventually found a place after seeing a sign on the street.

“It wasn’t very successful,” Kerecman said. “Every single Craigslist apartment that was listed was either kind of over-priced and gross or small, and the ones that weren’t overpriced were taken.”

Megan Stec, a sophomore studying early childhood education and special education, posted on the “University of Pittsburgh Class of 2016” Facebook group to find a subletter for her apartment over the summer.

For Stec, the official pages associated with Pitt are an easy, safe way to find a subletter, but the lack of acquaintance between two parties could pose problems.

“You’re not really sure how tidy, clean, or responsible they are,” she said. “There’s always the fear that they’re going to back out at the last minute or make a mess of the place.”