Lease transitions leave students on couches

The fall semester is drawing near, and the majority of the student body has the same nagging priority on its mind: moving.

For some students, such as incoming freshmen, the moving process is as simple as transferring their belongings from their hometown to their new residence in Bloomington.

But then there’s the other undergraduates: those who have been living in one location in Bloomington but plan on moving to another.

Although switching complexes might sound simple enough, where do students go, and what do they do with their stuff when their current lease ends days or weeks before the new one begins?

“I dread this time of the year,” senior Rebekah Lineback said. “My current lease ended near the end of July, yet (because of my job in Bloomington) I am forced to bum off friends until my new lease starts near the end of August. Luckily, I only live 40 minutes from town, so I am able to take my stuff home, but it’s really weird not having my own place.”

Students who live close to Bloomington can simply make the commute and store their belongings at home. But then there are students, such as junior Brad Murrell, who decided to rent a storage unit in town to store belongings during the lease transition.

“I really had no other choice but to purchase a storage unit,” Murrell said. “This leasing situation has been ridiculous. Once my lease ended at the beginning of summer, I have been staying with friends due to taking I-Core in Bloomington. Yet every time I became settled, their lease would run out, too. By the end of my break, I will have moved five times this summer.”

And storage might not even be the worst part of it: Some students still don’t know when they will be able to move into their new place.

“This summer has been really stressful,” senior Chelsea Sutton said. “It’s August, and we still don’t know when we’re actually moving in. We’ve pretty much been getting the runaround for the past three weeks. We signed back in November with Elkins Apartments and have been trying to work with them for the past month to move in early.

“We know that they condone it because we have a lot of friends moving in early (with Elkins). Their reps say they’re working on it but never return any of our calls with a
resolution.”

Not all complexes and landlords give their tenants a hard time. Some are more than willing to help the students out and make the transition as easy as possible.

“When our leases end, we typically have a five- to seven-day down period so the professional cleaners can come in and prepare the place before the new tenants move in,” Mark Hoffman of Pavilion Properties said. “We know moving in early is a big thing here in town, and we want to help our tenants as much as possible. The only issue is, we have to work around the subcontractors schedule because they’re stretched very thin.”

Many landlords understand the stress the “lease gaps” put on the students and are able to sympathize with the situation.

“We try to be really on top of cleaning, especially if we know the carpet will need to be replaced or something major like that,” said Lisa Kamen of Bryan Rentals. “We want to be ready to go when the students move out. All of the tenants we’ve dealt with in the past have been really nice, so if we are able to help them out by letting them move some of their big stuff into the basement — why not? We want our clientele to know that we’re there to help them.”