Come springtime, many upperclassmen become tentative realtors as they try to find off-campus housing in the Uptown New Orleans area.

Required to live on campus for freshman and sophomore years, some Tulane students said they are eager to move away from the communal bathrooms and twin-sized beds for their junior and senior years.

The cost of off-campus housing is comparable to on-campus living, totaling around $13,844 annually. Students choose to live off campus for varying reasons.

“[It’s] hard to have people just popping in your room,” junior Ellyn Frohberg said. “I was on a sports team the last couple of years, so I had 5 a.m. practices, and we’d have RAs coming in for random checks at like 11 p.m. It just wasn’t conducive to my lifestyle.”

Willing to give up close proximity to classes and food for the added amenities of personal space and autonomy, about 53 percent of students at Tulane University choose to live off campus.

Much of the close, off-campus housing is controlled by landlords who rent to students, and many of those students pass down their homes to friends or members of their respective Greek organizations. 

“This semester my friends found our house on Tulane Classifieds, but for next semester I found the place we’re going to be living in on Craigslist,” junior Helena Candaele said.

Students shared difficulties they faced during the house-finding process in addition to struggles they’ve faced while living off campus.

“[The potential landlord] thought we were trying to swindle her and started to harass all four of us with aggressive phone calls late at night threatening to tear up the lease if we didn’t give a second deposit,” sophomore Alyssa Clune said.

For most students this is their first time directly communicating with a landlord and paying rent, which is why some students fear they are being taken advantage of.

“The landlord is raising the price of this house for next semester about a hundred dollars per person,” Candaele said. “There’s no rent control around campus, and the landlords take advantage of the college students who are willing to pay that price to find a place to live around campus.”

Ah yes, prospective Landlord, I too feel that a 1br/1bath studio apt warrants 1,100 a month, because of its location to Tulane.

— NameCanNotBeBlank (@heykatt) March 30, 2014

Other students have voiced frustrations with living off campus due to the ineffectiveness of and miscommunications with landlords in response to their living conditions.

“My gutters were leaking, so my landlord tore them down,” junior Will Adams said. “When I asked him what his solution to the problem was, he said, ‘That was the solution.'”

Other students are dealing with consequences from miscommunication with landlords.

“My friend’s landlord threw away all of our stuff we had stored there over the summer without telling us, so we had a fun surprise when we got back in August,” senior Ally Bagley said.

The idea of good times with friends inclines some students to live off campus as upperclassmen. Students say, however, they didn’t anticipate the trouble they would face with landlords and moving.