One of the most common questions we get is: do I have to rent to college students? The reality is that we love to rent to college students at Zabace Property Management. A good rental experience usually comes with these types of tenants. College students tend to be thinking about the long term and their futures. They care about their credit and they want to make a good impression.
College students won’t have a lot of experience with property, so you do need to work with them and educate them about the process of maintaining a home. Living in a single family house is different from living in an apartment and there are basic repairs they’ll need to do. If you help them understand how to handle those things, they’ll be more comfortable in the property and you’ll have better outcomes.
On our website, we provide tips on how to take care of easy maintenance at our rental properties. For example, there are instructions on how to fix a garbage disposal that may have jammed. We also tell tenants how to flip an electrical switch if the power goes out. Helping tenants with these basic things will help them feel prepared when minor things happen.
There are a few other things to keep in mind when you’re renting to college students. It’s important to think about the academic cycle. There will be particular times throughout the year that they aren’t available. Once exams start, they won’t have a lot of time to be worrying about the upkeep of your property. This is why we recommend you have other people in place to take care of things. If you’re renting out a home with a yard, hire a gardener and include that cost in your monthly rent. If you have a property with a number of people in it; a large home with 
roommates, consider including or offering a cleaning service to your tenants. It’s amazing what a professional cleaning twice a month can do to keep your property looking good. The kitchens and the bathrooms will stay clean and it only costs about $10 a person every month.
If you have any questions about what might be involved when you rent your property to college students, please contact us at Zabace Property Management, and we’d be glad to help you.
