UT students deal with complications, safety concerns over summer subleasing
By Haley Butler
AUSTIN — Texas has notorious ghost towns, where tumbleweeds whirling through abandoned streets take the place of people. At the end of the spring semester, when UT students leave to their family homes or go on vacation, Guadalupe street seems to resemble deserted towns in west Texas. What do the students leave behind for free rent at their childhood home or a trip to the Grand Canyon? Their year-long housing leases signed at the beginning of the fall semester.
In order to be able to leave their lease over the summer without having to pay rent, students must find a sublet to occupy their room. If a student doesn’t sign their lease already knowing who will be taking their room during the summer, many go to Facebook to find their sublets. The online exchange between a subleaser and an interested sublet could take minutes, but entails a variety of complications: costs associated with realty companies, personal issues with other residents, and online safety.
Elise Nutt, a UT senior currently studying over the summer in L.A., said that she wanted to find someone who would pursue an “official sublease” and pay the realty company to switch out their names on the lease.
“It felt more secure [doing an official sublease],” Nutt said. “If something went wrong to the house, I would not be at fault.”
Nutt said that finding a sublet is hard to comeby because so many students leave town for the summer and that ultimately, it’s about offering incentives for those looking for a room.
“A lot of students offer discounts on their rent and I couldn’t afford that with my L.A trip,” Nutt said. “I ended up finding someone on Craigslist who could move in right when I was leaving. The only way I could get them to move in was by keeping my name on the lease and having them pay me monthly. I am still nervous that they will just get up and leave.”
Even if a student finds someone to move into their room, the problems are not necessarily over. Over the course of two leases, Kelby Harrison, a UT communications senior, has had two different roommates move out during the summer semesters. She said that getting a new roommate can either be easy or can cause major disputes.
“I did not get to talk with [my new roommate] because she was flying in from Cleveland, so I had no idea what she was going to be like,” Harrison said. “After a few weeks, we argued about the dishes constantly. I didn’t ever go in my living room because I didn’t want to see her.”
Payment and roommate issues aside, David Dareing, a Texas A&M University senior whose girlfriend attends UT, said he is worried about the safety issues of finding a roommate online.
“Last semester, my girlfriend’s roommate unexpectedly left for the summer and [her roommate] found a sublet on Craigslist. I was annoyed that she allowed the first person to contact her to move in,” Dareing said. “I didn’t care that it was a guy who moved into her apartment, but I am weirded out posting an ad somewhere like Craigslist, a website that doesn’t have a lot of safety credibility, and allowing a random person to stay in your room for three months.”
Preon Evans, the leasing and marketing manager at 21 Rio in West Campus, recognizes the financial issues and safety risks that come with finding a sublet and suggests to start searching for a fellow student as early as possible.
“Typically, I tell my residents to find out as early as possible if there’s a chance they could be leaving for the summer,” Evans said. “I suggest finding [a sublet] on the official UT subleasing page so you can find someone with similar demographics as you, to avoid safety and roommate issues. Unfortunately, even if you don’t find a sublet, rent is still charged to the person signed on the lease.”
Haley Butler is a senior journalism student at UT and a broadcast intern at KUT’s Texas Standard. You can follow her on Twitter: @haleym_butler.
