For people who have ever tried to sublease an apartment in Boston, they know that the struggle is real. It’s a stressful process that subjects you to some of Craigslist’s finest.
Arguably one of the most active groups in our city’s subletting scene is students. There are a large number of people coming from other countries or states to stay for only the academic year. At the same time, a good percentage of local students take off in the summers for internships, study abroad and volunteer opportunities. With these two factors combined, parts of Boston can seem like a revolving door of real estate.
Mara Onita Lenco and Joanna Kimszal, two graduate students at Boston University, have both gone through their own subletting experiences - none of which have been particularly pleasant. Seeing their peers at school encountering the same problems, they stepped up last winter and started to create a site that makes subletting simpler for students: Sub-It.
“At the time, Mara and I had been living off-campus for three years,” Kimszal started. “Neither of us have spent the entire summer here, so we would sublet our rooms to someone else. It was so stressful to find someone we could trust, who we know would pay on time and who we don’t have to worry about.”
“I was searching everywhere on the Internet to see if there were a site other than Craigslist that would make finding a trustworthy subletter easier,” she continued. “It was crazy to me to think that this is such a big thing among students, but there’s no service to help them.”
Sublet arrangements made easy
The way that Sub-It will work is this: Students first make a profile on the site, using their .edu email addresses. From there, they can post an ad for their apartment or room that they’re trying to sublease - free of charge. Simultaneously, other college kids from all over are able to search and express their interest in subletting the places posted.
Once two students agree to a sublet arrangement, there will be a safe transaction made through Sub-It. There’s a slight service fee for both parties - 10% of the monthly rent for the student who posted their place and 5% of the monthly rent for the student who’s taking over the lease.
“It was crazy to me to think that this is such a big thing among students, but there’s no service to help them.”
Despite the slight cost associated with Sub-It, Onita Lenco and Kimszal believe their service offers many more benefits than free sites like Craigslist. For example, they maintain that limiting the user pool to students will vet out riskier sublet situations. Basically, they think it’ll weed out some of the weirdos, making for safer and more comfortable living arrangements.
Addressing safety concerns
Onita Lenco told me about a horror story that helped inspire Sub-It’s efforts. While interning at MGH, she met a friend who had one of the worst subletting experience.
“She came here from Morocco because she got an internship for cancer research,” Onita Lenco began. “She told me how hard it was to come to new culture not knowing where to start to look for a place to live.”
“She ended up on Craigslist, getting a room that was super far away from work and where she was living with a ton of people with completely different ages,” she added. “There were problems with strangers coming in and out of the apartment, and she was actually robbed. A lot of her stuff stolen from her room.”
The Sub-It team wants to prevent situations like this from happening to other students. While the two founders admit that they can’t eliminate every single risk involved in subletting, they can make the process easier for college kids and put their minds somewhat at ease.
And although Sub-It won’t be doing a full launch until the spring, the team is already receiving positive feedback from not only students, but also landlords.
“We’ve talked to a bunch of landlords. Initially, we didn’t think they’d be open to our site, but we started to see that most of them are open to using it,” said Onita Lenco. “They feel like it promises them more security about who’s coming into their houses.”
Images via Mara Onita Lenco.
