Students Go Online for Off-Campus Housing

Instead of walking down Telegraph Avenue in search of housing, sophomore Daniel Chung browsed pages and pages online for a place to live.

Students looking for off-campus housing have now increasingly turned to online classifieds to find affordable and nearby housing options.

Online services such as Uloop.com now allow students to search through listings specifically for their campus, and provide a more protected way of searching for housing online, said Uloop campus rep manager Dave Hicks.

He added that Uloop is more convenient than other online housing markets since its display page is customized to suit the needs of students from different campuses.

"Once you log in, you're only going to see relevant content that is just for Berkeley students," he said. "It's sort of a closed, protected area for Berkeley students to post anything they want for free."

Uloop, founded in January 2007 on the UC Santa Barbara campus, was launched on the UC Berkeley campus January of this year. It has now expanded to include listings for more than 50 schools across the country.

"We've really wanted to be a free service to students so that they can find housing, jobs, books, on-campus events and just connect with one another," Hicks said.

While Uloop may provide more specialized services for college students and specifically students on the UC Berkeley campus, many said they prefer networking Web site Craigslist.org since it has more housing listings.

Sophomore Disa Yoo, who recently started her housing search for next year, said she's been relying predominantly on Craigslist.

"I think Craigslist has the most listings and more options," Yoo said. "I looked at Uloop too, but since it's new there weren't as many listings. But since you have to be a Berkeley student, it is probably more reliable."

Chung said he also turned to Craigslist because it was the most convenient, although he admitted that the listings may not always be accurate.

"There's always the risk that you'll like the description on the site but then not really like what you see," he said.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said the site is meant to serve whole communities from San Francisco to New York City, instead of just colleges, though it remains popular among students.

"It's becoming the normal place people turn to when looking for housing," he said. "We find that people keep using the site in increasing numbers."

Newmark said while Craigslist may not be as protected as sites like Uloop that require logins with your university e-mail, the site is still a safe and popular place to turn to for housing.

"We find our community overwhelmingly trustworthy," Newmark said. "We have some bad guys out there, but like in any aspect of your life, you have to use common sense."

UC Berkeley provides housing tutorials and online housing listings specifically for its students through Cal Rentals.

According to Cal Rentals Director of Business and Administrative Services Nancy Jurich, the service provides a way to search through listings intended specifically for them. While it costs $20 to access Cal Rental's listings and counseling, more than 3,000 students subscribed to their services last year.

"I think there's an advantage to Cal Rentals in that the properties that are listed are looking for UC affiliates, like students or faculty, to live there," Jurich said.

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