6 Ways Students Can Disrupt Your Apartment Community

By Madison White on December 15, 2016

College students can be wonderful, respectful, and lively residents to have in your apartment complex. However, this doesn’t excuse them from having a few downfalls too.

You can often assume what issues your residents may have while they’re renting from you, but the impact that students have on your apartment community may be entirely different.

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If you’re aware of these differences, you can work on preventing them and being prepared for them when they do arise. Here are six ways that college students may disrupt your apartment community.

1. Different schedules

It shouldn’t be a shock to anybody that college students often live on wildly different schedules than the rest of the world. Depending on when their classes are, they may be forced to take up part-time jobs at strange times. Their study schedules may require that they stay up very late at night and miss out on sleep. Some students even take most of their classes in the evening.

Because of this, working a college student’s schedule in to fit with everyone else’s 9-to-5 jobs might be difficult. This can make planning events somewhat of a challenge.

2. Noise tolerance

Now, noise tolerance can vary widely among different types of students. Regardless of what type they are, they may have issues either way. Some students may be very used to living in very noisy dorm-like areas. It may be common for them to blast their music at all hours of the night and not have anyone complain about it. However, playing loud music at 11 p.m. in an apartment complex may cause some issues.

On the opposite hand, students may be used to very quiet spaces where only adults live. If other residents have loud children that like to play outside often, this might upset students who rely on the quiet to study and work.

3. Differing amenities

Similarly, many college students have different tastes in amenities than older families. College students will often rely solely on the internet for their entertainment. This could mean that they’re very in tune with trends on YouTube or new shows on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Other residents, however, may be more accustomed to traditional media like cable television. Their ideas about what is current may be completely different than a college student’s. Having these rifts in tastes about popular culture can make it hard to find common ground between residents.

4. Time constraints

While most people work on very regular and timely schedules, college students are subject to the whims of their professors. This means that a student’s workload will often shift dramatically at different points during the year. When the workload becomes increasingly heavy, like during periods around midterms and finals, students may disappear altogether in order to study and prepare for exams. It may be difficult for other residents on regular schedules to understand a certain unresponsiveness during these times. They may assume that something has gone wrong between them and the student residents, when in reality, they’re just hitting the books.

5. Parking

Another issue that may arise is a parking dilemma. If many of your other residents are couples or families, they are likely to share possibly one or two cars per living unit. However, whenever students live together, it is likely that each of them will have their own car. This means that if you average about three bedrooms per space, a normal resident requires one to two spaces, but a student apartment will probably require three. This can clog up the amount of spaces available, especially when parking is already tight, and cause disagreement between students and other residents.

6. Accidents

It is also possible that your apartment complex will be the first place that college students live on their own. Because they lack experience, there may be some issues that arise simply out of ignorance. Students may not have the experience to deal with issues like plumbing, lighting, internet, or even just managing the upkeep of the house. They may make some rookie mistakes that other residents could fix in a heartbeat. However, if you’re patient and understanding with your student residents, they are usually up to learn anything. They know that they’re inexperienced and they just need a little help.

Despite their downfalls, college students really have a lot to give back to any apartment community. They are often open to meeting new people at this time in their lives. They can really become a great tool in connecting your apartment community should you know how to use their strengths and weaknesses. The biggest step to finding functionality amongst all residents is to understand their needs in an apartment community. Needs will differ across the board and even across the same type of residents, but any attempt to satisfy those needs is an attempt worth making.

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