Check subleases on craigslist. I got a 9 month sublease for about 650 a month (for a 1 bedroom) in North Campus across the street from a bus stop a couple of years ago. Even if you get a short term sublease, usually you can always re-up after the sublease. Make sure if you're getting a sublease, you check the place out and make sure your previous tenant is covering any damage. Also make sure you know for sure what the terms of any future contract you sign might be once the sublease is up. Apartment prices in general have gone up though. My sophomore year I got a 1 bedroom in Far West for 500 but I doubt you can get something like that anymore. That said, get an apartment locator and tell him your price range. Focus on places along the Intramural Field and Far West bus routes. You can also check out the other bus routes but those are the two main ones for you. I'd avoid Riverside like the plague. You can get dirt cheap apartments over there but it just isn't worth the headache.
Seriously, live in the dorms next year. UT has some excellent on-campus housing and, even if you get stuck in Jester, you're likely to meet a lot of new friends that may become roommate options in the future. As others have said, living by yourself in West Campus is prohibitively expensive, but roommates drop that price. I lived in West Campus for three years, in a different building each year, with roommates and never paid more than $800 per month in rent. The key is to avoid the big-box leasing offices - I lived at both the Texan West Campus and Texan Tower and was screwed out of every penny of my deposit by each of the different offices (Ely being the worst). My advice is to live in the dorms your first year (if you're lucky, you'll live in San Jac or Durren), meet some people you wouldn't mind living with the next year and sign a lease in West Campus for your sophomore year. Everything you do freshman year will be centered around campus; clubs, organizations, parties, etc. and living in Far West would make it difficult to do any of that. The people I know who lived in Far West said that, while it was nice, it also made you stuck on campus the whole day. If you have time between classes, you'll be stuck with a lot of downtime and wandering around, which will get old fast.
Thread bump: I live in Far West right now and our lease is ending this July. I would have loved to just renew our rent at $770/month, but our new 12-month lease offer jumps by $80 to $857/month. This increase seemed outrageous to me, so I wanted to ask the board members if others are seeing this sort of rent increase? The current lease is a 12-month lease for a 2/1.5 that we signed pretty much the day the unit became available, hence our reasonable rate. The manager said that the open market rate is around $887/month. For those of you looking at Far West rents, are these quotes similar to what you are seeing? Thanks!
welcome to austin, where the rent just keeps going up and up. look at how expensive downtown or how the new central apartments are. that price seems fine.
Yeah I talked to a few other people who's rents seem to be increasing a lot too. The manager at the office also seemed apologetic but wouldn't budge on the price saying that her computer spit it out and can't be negotiated. Eh, that's $90 more from this lowly grad student's budget. I'll have to drink a little less Thanks for the input.
Ah, probably missed that. He did say that he was moving to Austin this summer and asked "any current UT students" about cheap places to live. I may have jumped the gun.
