6A the university daily kansan
news
friday, march 5, 2004
Some parents, students purchase instead of renting
By Azita Tafreshi
atafreshi@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
As students begin to shop around for places to live next year, some are finding that the best place to be is under their parents' roof.
While forking over monthly rental payments to an apartment complex is always an option, some parents choose instead to buy a house for their son or daughter.
Photo Illustration by Amanda Kim Stairret and Kit Leifler/Kansan
The firm loads on.
Some students live in houses purchased by their parents. The money students spend on rent can instead be spent on the parents' house payment. The family ends up owning a house — an investment — rather than losing the money spent on rent.
daughter.
Parents who purchase a house for their son or daughter are making a good investment, said Rae Herod, Lawrence junior. She said her parents bought the townhouse where she and her two roommates began living two years ago after realizing the benefits of being her landlord.
his or being her friend. "They didn't like the idea of renting because it's just wasted money," Herod said. "But if you buy a place and rent it out, then the profits actually go back to you."
Parents get a good deal when they invest in a house for their children said Craig Dreiling, an agent with Lawrence Realty Associates, 4321 W. Sixth St. He said for a "decent" four-bedroom apartment in Lawrence, students could expect to pay between $850 to $1,200 per month.
"The money that you pay for an apartment could be going toward a house, and then you'd actually have something to show for it," Herod said.
Dreiling said that when he was a student at the University, he bought a house through a Federal Housing Administration program called Kiddie Condo Loan. The program offers low interest mortgages to full-time students with a cosigner.
With a program of this nature, he said students could afford to buy, for example, a four-bed
"You have a lot more freedom living in a house than you would in an apartment. You can actually paint and make the space your own instead of just having white, boring walls." Rae Herod
walls.
Rae Herod
Lawrence junior
room, $150,000 property. After a minimum $4,500 down payment, he said they would sign for a $145,500 loan at 6-percent interest for 30 years. This would break down to an $868 monthly mortgage payment that Dreiling said three roommates could pay for with a rental rate of about $289.
As long as the student had roommates, it would actually be cheaper for parents to buy their children a house than it would be to pay for them to live in the residence halls, with the added benefits of owning a piece of property and establishing credit, Dreiling said.
"Since one person is taking all the risk, it's nice that in four years when they turn around to sell it, they'll have gained equity in the property," Dreiling said.
Living in a house where her roommate's mom is the landlord has provided Lindsay Gentry with flexibility that she said she wouldn't have been able to find anywhere else. When the Olathe senior returned to Lawrence in January from six months of studying abroad in Spain, she not only had a place to stay, but she was also sharing a three-bedroom house with only one other person.
"You don't really feel as a 22-year-old that you deserve to live in a house this nice," Gentry
said. After living in apartments for two years, Gentry said one of the major advantages of having her friend's mom as her landlord was how quickly she responded if something needed to be fixed.
"If something breaks, the people who own the house are going to be there as soon as possible because it's their kid that's living there." Herod said.
Herod said collecting rent from her roommates would sometimes put her in a tough position, but she agreed that it
still beat apartment living.
With that freedom comes added responsibility, but Christopher Gomez, Newton sophomore, said he found the responsibilities that accompany owning his house exciting rather than burdensome.
"When I first moved in here, I
was out planting grass, and I was watering and fertilizing," he said. "I just took a liking to it and appreciated that even the outside of a house reflects how a person is."
Next year Gomez's sister will also be attending the University, which he said was a major factor in his family's decision to purchase the three-bedroom house. He said it would be convenient for her to have a home away from home, as well as a place to stay after she experienced residence hall life. Plus, she could
help out with the bills once in awhile.
Gomez said despite not having roommates, he was paying the majority of his $1,100 per month mortgage payment with a part-time job, while his parents paid the rest.
"Not a lot of people understahd what their parents go through at home until they leave and have this on their own," Gomez said. "It really does teach you for the future."
— Edited by Nikki Nugent
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