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Welcome to the help section of the website. Below is a list of Questions and Answers that are frequently asked at our office. We hope to have adequately answered any questions you may have. What is this service? The Associated Students of the University of Oregon office (ASUO) is one of the only places at the University of Oregon to find off campus housing information and listings. Landlords and students can place ads for their rental availability through our services. Each listing will only be posted online. There are four different areas to list under: Rental, Roommate, Faculty/Staff, and Sabbaticals. General rentals include houses, apartments, studios, quads and duplexes. Roommate listings include people searching for roommates and rooms that are available in individual rental units. Faculty/Staff section is reserved for those individuals that want to rent only to faculty and staff of the University of Oregon. Sabbaticals are listings which are open to academics and can include exchanges. Each listing will be posted for 30 days. What is the ASUO? The ASUO is the student government office on campus. We have a variety of services that we provide to students one of which is rental information. As of September 2002 the ASUO has taken over off campus rental listings. Our rental listing website was created in March 2003. We are extremely excited about the services we are providing and welcome questions and comments from our customers and students. What happened to the last Rental Information Office? Unfortunately the Rental Information Office that previously provided students with off campus housing was defunded and closed as of September 2002. The ASUO saw the importance of this office and took over the services that it provided on that date. The ASUO has seen a great response from both students and landlords to the services we are now providing. How do I post a listing? To fill out a listing you can either submit the proper information on this website under the Submit link and follow the directions located there, or come into our office and fill out a paper format of the form. The ASUO office is open 8:30am-5pm Monday-Friday. How much does this service cost? The listing fee only includes listing your rental on this website. Students currently enrolled in classes get the use of the service free of charge, for faculty and staff there is a $5 listing fee and for all other landlords and community members there is a $10 fee. All the above prices will be listed for 30 days unless otherwise specified. Why are students free? The ASUO office is a Student Incidental Fee funded organization. We operate off of a fee that students pay every term they are enrolled in the University and therefore students are paying for this particular service as a part of their student fees. It is important to maintain this service free of charge to students because they are paying for this and other services that the ASUO provides. Who do I pay? Please make a check or money order out to ASUO Rentals. Unfortunately, we do not accept credit card payment either in our office or over the Internet at this time. You can either drop off the payment at the ASUO office (open between 8:30 am and 5:00 pm),Suite 4 EMU or mail it to us at: ATTN: Rental Listings ASUO Executive Suite 4 EMU 1228 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1228 How long are listings posted for? Listings are posted on the website for 30 days unless the renter chooses to pay more. What do I do if my unit gets rented before the one month posting period ends? If your rental unit is filled before the 30 days is over please contact our office and let us know so that we can remove your posting, otherwise we will keep it up for the full 30 days. Can I edit my listing after I post it? You can edit your posting once you have submitted it to the website but the Rental Information Manager and the ASUO staff have to make those changes for you. Emailing the changes is the best way to ensure that everything will be received and the changes can be made. Email: asuorent@gladstone.uoregon.edu. Please make sure to specify that they are changes that you want to make and include your address or listed name in the subject of the email. Why doesn't my listing appear after I submit it? Your listing may not appear because the ASUO must approve the listing after you submit it. This also may be because there was never a listing fee received. The listing will not be posted online until the listing fee is received and/or we verify the rental listing is coming from an enrolled student. (see listing prices above) How do I post a picture? To post a picture you must email a digital image as an attachment to the ASUO rental email. There are many different file formats that are accepted in the database but when in doubt stick to these formats which are guaranteed to work: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP. Please try to keep the file size small, otherwise your listing becomes difficult for others to load and view. (Note to users of Netscape 4: When selecting your photo from the "File Upload" window, you may have to select "All Files" from the "Files of Type" drop down to see the image file.) Can I post a picture after my listing has been submitted? If you have a picture you want to post after the listing has been submitted you can e-mail a picture to the Rental Info Manager and he or she will be able to post a picture for you. Please try to keep the file size small, otherwise pictures will not be posted. When is the best time to post a listing? Unfortunately there is no one correct answer to this question. There is demand for housing year round but the biggest housing boom is during the end of the university’s spring term and beginning of the fall term. There is also a lot of housing activity during the beginning and ends of each semester.(Check University calendar for dates) General Renting Questions top How do I find off campus housing? This is a very general and hard question to answer. The first step you need to decide upon is what type of housing you wish to find, whether it be sharing an apartment, studio, quad, duplex, or house. Once you know what type of housing you want, it will become easier to search for. Our web site offers a list of all types of housing including off campus rentals, roommate searches, faculty/staff housing, and sabbaticals. For other types of housing not listed on our webiste here are a few more suggestions: 1. Search classified ads of newspapers in town. There are three large newspapers: The Register Guard, The Oregon Daily Emerald and 2. Search through the list of apartments located in Eugene. You can locate a majority (although not all) of the apartments in Eugene from the phone book. We recommend searching through the Internet (www.yellowpages.com) or a local phone book depending on what sort of resources you have available to you. Have a few specifications in mind that you are searching for when contacting apartment complexes. Make sure to ask questions and set up a tour so that you can see your prospective living environment before you sign a lease. Also make sure to ask if the apartment complex has a web site with pictures in case you cannot see the apartment prior to signing a lease. 3. Contact property managers. There are a large amount of properties near campus and in the Eugene community that are owned and operated by property managers. These businesses can be great resources when searching for housing. Property managers do not necessarily specialize in one type of housing, often you can find many different types of housing from property managers (usually excluding roommate openings). Some property managers have web sites with their available openings listed on them, others have paper lists that they print weekly with availabilities that you can stop by their office and pick up. It depends on each property manager, we suggest contacting each one of them and asking any questions you may have. We currently do not have a list of property managers in Eugene, the best way to find a list would be searching through the phone book locally or online (www.yellowpages.com). 4. On campus searching. If you happen to be in town and on campus many students (and some landlords) post flyers up on campus with their openings. Some bulletin boards on campus (located in the EMU and Bookstore) have these posters up year round. Check them out. Also, it never hurts to walk around your potential neighborhood. Campus is borderd by hundreds of apartment complexes and living situations. If you take the time to walk around, you may find exactly what you're looking for sooner than you expect. 5. ASUO Rental Directory (which you are searching through now) is the only on campus database for off campus rentals. The Rental Directory acts as a liason for students and landlords to post their available rental listings and potential tenants call and talk to the landlords directly. 6. Driving around Eugene is also another potential way of finding off campus housing. Because many people that use this web site and our services are looking for rentals close to campus people find it possible to drive, walk or bike around Eugene and find signs in the fronts of available rentals. If you are in town, this is yet another way to find Eugene rentals. What is a quad, duplex, studio, apartment and house? Quad: usually a number of rooms that are individually rented (most of the time 4 rooms) that share a joint kitchen, living area and or bath. Duplex: usually duplexes have more than one apartment, floors or divisions of the living quarters. For instance a house that has been broken into two individual rental units by the upstairs and downstairs unit would be considered a duplex. Studio: can be considered a multiple of things. Some studios are one-bedroom apartments attached to a house that is then rented out. Studios can also be considered a one-bedroom unit that does not differentiate between the living area and a bedroom. Apartment: A room or combination of rooms generally located in a building occupied by more than one household. House: a Structure or dwelling designed for one or more persons. How do I search for roommates? The best way to search for roommates is first to look under the Roommate Search section of our web site. Keep in mind that students also put up posters around campus and the community that you can search through. You can potentially find classified ads in the newspaper for roommate openings, we suggest looking through them as well. Check out the Links page for newspapers in Eugene. When is the best time to look for housing? There is no great answer to this question. There is demand and supply for housing at all times of the year in Eugene. Keep in mind that at the beginning and ends of the university’s terms usually has more rental activity due to students moving in and out of rentals. The biggest time of the year for rentals is the end of Spring term. (see UofO calendar for specific dates) Many leases are ending during this time and students will be looking for rentals for summer and the following year. There is also a lot of rental activity before Fall term right before students will be returning to school. Keep in mind this information is what our office has had the majority of experience with, this information is not set in stone. Do I have to sign a lease for summer to guarantee a spot for fall even if I will not be in town? There is no rule that says you must sign a lease even if you will not be in town for the summer. But keep in mind that depending on the location of the rental and the availability (or lack thereof) in Eugene for rentals a specific location is most likely to be rented by the time you return from summer. Some landlords might reserve a location for you but depending on the type of rental you are looking at depends on the flexibility of the landlord. Some apartment complexes do reserve units but most likely you will not find this service for houses and other types of rentals. Ask the landlord about these details before signing a lease but keep in mind that some students do feel the need to sign the lease in order to have the rental for the following school year even though they will not be occupying the rental. Another piece of information to consider is that the university is increasing enrollment every year and the amount of housing in Eugene that is most desirable for students in staying fairly fixed. With more and more students on campus there is a greater likeliness that most rentals will be filled even if you decide to wait to sign a lease. How do I find animal friendly housing? This question is asked quite frequently. It is somewhat harder to find animal friendly housing near campus but not impossible. The ASUO office does not know of any official (or unofficial) list of landlords or rental units that are animal friendly. Our only recommendations are to ask around to previous renters that know of animal friendly landlords and make sure to look at the options boxes in the rental listings online that specifies pets accepted or not. Listings that are located in the newspapers and on our web site are more likely to have animal friendly landlords. It is harder to find property managers and apartment complexes that allow animals, although not impossible. We recommend you call around to these places and ask. Should I lease a sight unseen? Our suggestion is that no one should lease a sight unseen. There are problems the renter could run into without being able to physically see the rental unit before moving in. We do however understand that many students are not in town or close enough to visit Eugene before moving in. For those students try to talk to the landlord and explain your situation, there might be an agreement that can be worked out with the two of you to alleviate any problems that might arise once you have moved in. We would suggest you do as much research as you can on the rental before signing a lease. Ask the landlord if you can contact the previous tenants, ask for recommendations the landlord might have from previous tenants and contact the Better Business Bureau and places that would report positive or negative information about a landlord. Who do I talk to for more information? Make sure to first read all of this information to help answer your questions. There are also question mark boxes throughout the web site and database that can guide you with more information if you find a particular field troubling. Otherwise please contact the Rental Information Manager or the ASUO office with further questions. |
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ASUO Rental Office Associated Students of the University of Oregon Executive Office, EMU Suite 4 1228 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1228 OR Click Here to Make Payment
asuorent@uoregon.edu
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