Want to live off campus? Northeastern offers tools to help students find apartments
Northeastern’s Off Campus Engagement and Support office helps students navigate Boston housing with advising, online tools and info sessions.
Many Northeastern University students live off campus in Boston at some point during their college experience. To support them, the university’s Off Campus Engagement and Support office helps students understand and navigate the process of finding appropriate housing.
Staff members are available to advise students and families in person as well as through virtual appointments, phone calls and email. The office also offers a wide range of online resources on apartment hunting, roommate selection and off-campus safety. One example is the Apartment Search Toolkit, a one-stop shop for students and families unsure of where or how to begin searching for off-campus housing in Boston.
In the coming months, the office will also host “Living Off Campus” information sessions and two apartment fairs.
Northeastern Global News spoke with Mallory Pernaa, director of Off Campus Engagement and Support, about the guidance the office provides. The responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
How can your office help students in finding off-campus housing?
Our office has resources and staff to help guide students through the off-campus housing process, everything from selecting neighborhoods, identifying a budget and listings within that budget and finding roommates.
Our first step is usually to connect students directly to licensed, reputable realtors and listers through our database. We are here along the way to help answer students’ questions about lease contracts, applications, what’s normal, what’s maybe not, and what they should consider before signing.
Since leases are legally binding, they’re very difficult to change later. So we want to make sure that students and their families are aware of what they’re actually agreeing to so far in advance of the fall semester.
When should students start looking for off-campus housing and come to you for help?
The majority of leases require re-signing in January if students want to stay in their apartment. Right now is the time when a lot of property owners are finding out that their students may be graduating or they’re going to be leaving the apartments. So we start hosting moving off-campus workshops or info sessions in January, and then we have our annual apartment fair in February and another virtual one in May for anyone who’s a little later to the search.
What can students expect from the apartment fair?
We work to bring about 25 different property managers, realtors and temporary housing groups to students during the apartment fair. They can actually meet with someone from that company directly, get answers to their questions, find out more about listings and what the application process looks like, and what fees might be involved.
We also have city and campus resources that are applicable for that time. Things like student financial services, the city of Boston’s information about how to live responsibly in the city, and things to know about trash and recycling.
Our team and our team of student community ambassadors answer questions about what neighborhoods are easy to commute from, what are some things to be aware of when selecting roommates and so on.
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What is the hardest part of finding off-campus housing?
Sometimes students feel really rushed in this process and don’t always feel like they have the time to come and consult with someone between the time they’re given a lease and the deadline to sign. A lot of time, they have 24 hours to figure this out, so there’s a lot of pressure put on students, sometimes by realtors, sometimes by themselves, because they just want to get this done so they can focus on their semester. We want students to know that they can take a minute and come see anyone in our office. We are located in 151 Speare Hall and available for walk-ins, virtual bookings, phone and email.
What is the newest tool your office has prepared for students looking to live off-campus?
We’re going to do a couple of sessions about how to demystify your lease contract using artificial intelligence and AI assistant Claude and what prompts might be helpful and applicable in the Boston rental market.
Sometimes it’s hard to take the time to read a 30- or 40-page lease, so this is something that will save students time. Students will learn how to guide those AI tools to give them the information that’s going to be most salient to the student experience.
