Finding housing from overseas

[Crystal@clear]

I was so happy to find out that I was accepted to my first choice school....................

.....................and now I'm just stressed out about finding a place to live. The school I'm going to attend doesn't offer dorms to graduate students, and the waiting list for school apartments is soooo long (I've heard it takes about a year of waiting) that I have to find a place off-campus.

I'm living in Korea right now and won't be able to go the States and find a place to live in person. I'm still in the process of writing my thesis (the school year ends in late June) and not to mention the high cost of flight tickets! So I'm stuck using the Internet to find an apartment.

I've looked at apartmentratings.com, rent.com, and sent out emails to a number of apartments I wanted to lease, and a few emails to realtors in that area. From all those emails, I only got one email back which said that they had no available apartments. I've waited a week for more replies, but no replies came back (and I'm starting to panic)......................... At first I was very picky about the places, but now the 'bad' apartments are starting to look very attractive.....

If I were living in the US, I would pop down for a weekend trip and look for a place in person; if I had any friends or relatives living in that area, I would ask them to find place, but sadly, I have neither so I'm stuck.........

Not to mention I have no credit history, no past renting experience, and no funding. Guess I'm not the most popular prospective resident.

What about the rest of you guys? How are you going to find a place to live while you're overseas?

[fuzzylogician]

There are several threads about this topic in Officially Grads that you might want to read. In general, here are some tips:

- Current students will be able to recommend areas you should concentrate on and areas you should avoid; they can tell you what price range to expect and how long a commute you can expect to your school. Ask them!

- If you can find a roommate through your department, you have good chances of doing OK. Maybe a current student is looking for a roommate or has a friend who is looking? Maybe another prospective is able to look for an apartment in person and is looking for a roommate? Ask! (departments usually have a grad students mailing list which you could use, find out what it is)

- Find out if it's really that bad to wait until August to find a place. In many places it's entirely possible to find a good apartment within several weeks in the summer, though I understand that it's very stressful.

- Get a letter of endorsement from your department (in case you will receive a stipend). Show it to potential landlords and to realtors. Landlords will know that grad students with a steady income are usually good tenants.

- Find out if your university has its own housing website; most large universities have one which is only open to students and will help you avoid scams.

- Spend some time learning the do's and don't's of renting. If this is the first time you'll rent, you'll want to avoid as many mistakes as possible. For example, consider getting in touch with a current grad to have them go look at apartments you are considering renting. Renting sight unseen is usually a bad idea.

Good luck!

ETA: what I did last year was email my department's graduate student mailing list to get some recommendations about locations and ask if anyone knew of an empty room. I was in touch with a couple of people who were looking for roommates and I ended up deciding to live with a student who was then a 1st year and was looking for a roommate for an apartment she was going to rent. We exchanged a few emails, talked on skype, and decided that we have similar preferences and would make good roommates. I took the room sight unseen (not a good idea in hindsight, but I was lucky and it turned out OK). I got a letter of endorsement from my department and was approved by the landlord without any trouble.

Edited May 21, 2010 by fuzzylogician

[Subang]

I've also been looking for a place to live from overseas. The biggest help that I received was from my department. Many places will not rent sight unseen in the city where I will be moving, so I contacted the department and they put me in contact with a graduate student in the department that was willing to meet with the landlord and take some pictures of the places for me. Extremely helpful! Hopefully, I can repay the favor at some point in the future...take her out to lunch or something. The university's housing website was also very helpful in locating places that weren't listed on craigslist, but you have to already have your university login which can be a problem for some. And finally, craigslist is a great resource. It is usually pretty legit and it can be used to find available places as well as to post ads for people in the area that might be willing to go look at the apartments and take some pictures for you in exchange for a deposit into a paypal account or something.

Good luck!