www.HousingAnywhere.com is a housing platform where students that go abroad for an exchange semester or internship can sublet their rooms. Incoming exchange students that come to your city can rent those rooms. Thus, HousingAnywhere is a student-to-student platform where demand & supply of short term accommodation can find each other. It is a very simple, but very effective tool to increase the amount of short term accommodation available to your incoming exchange students.
HousingAnywhere is founded by students from the RSM Erasmus University Rotterdam, who had problems subletting their rooms when they left Rotterdam for an exchange semester to Singapore a few years ago: none of the local Dutch students were interested in renting a room for just 4 months. At the same time, they heard from the RSM International Office that a lot of incoming international exchange students had problems finding short-stay accommodation in Rotterdam. That is why they decided to set up a platform for short-term housing.
Besides the dorm rooms offered by the Erasmus University, HousingAnywhere is now one of the official housing tools that students can use when finding housing in Rotterdam. See: www.housing.eur.nl.
Students that go abroad can advertise their rooms for free, and incoming students can respond for free. Landlords are not allowed on the platform: only students can use the website, by allowing only those people with a university e-mailaddress, e.g. @student.maastrichtuniversity.nl posting advertisements. By refusing landlords on the platform, it is more sure that the rooms offered are of good quality and that international students will not be ripped off, which happens a lot to international students. However, if preferred by the university, also university's trusted named landlords/partners can be activated on the platform by request of the Accommodation or International Office.
In the short existence of HousingAnywhere, it already caught attention by many universities. Soon after launching the platform at the Erasmus University, also other Dutch universities wanted to join. The creators of the platform realized that this platform could not only be of great help inside the Netherlands, but everywhere around the world: housing students anywhere.
NOTE: don't focus too much on our list of our partner universities: this platform is for helping the incoming students finding a place in the city of that university, at a local level' if you emphasize too much the partners we have, they will reply: "most of our partners are not on the platform", which is totally out of the scope: HousingAnywhere is to increase the number of rooms locally.
If you invite students to study for a few months at your university, you should also provide these guests with good housing facilities. This can be done by dormitories and residence halls. Additionally you can decide to offer also HousingAnywhere to your students so that they can also search themselves off-campus.
Asking all outgoing exchange/internship students to rent out their rooms on HousingAnywhere, and telling incoming students that they can find a room on HousingAnywhere, is a very easy and very effective way of increasing the supply of short-term accommodation.
In the past 12 months, there were 323 rooms offered in Rotterdam on this platform. Thus, besides the international dorm facilities, incoming students had suddenly 323 extra rooms to choose from in Rotterdam. This was a great help for the housing office in Rotterdam, as well for the international students.
Note that HousingAnywhere is only a platform: it makes it easier for people (supply & demand) to find each other. Only people with a valid student email address can post advertisements on the platform, this means that landlords can not post anything, avoiding people who want to rip-off students or scammers. HOWEVER, do know that it is of the users' own responsibility to make arrangements and contracts with each other.
For students advertising: understand that both your university and HousingAnywhere are NOT involved in any issues that might arise with a future tenant, like rental payments, ruining an apartment, tenant not showing up, etc.
Tips: if you find a renter or someone who wants to rent out a room, it is advised to meet each other on Skype to get to know each other, to become friends on Facebook to check out if someone exists (and is thus not a fake person), and to make a good contract with each other about the payment terms etc. Do NEVER pay anything upfront.
Joining HousingAnywhere can be done easily by contacting Niels van Deuren at info@housinganywhere.com. You will receive sample emails which you can send to your exchange students, and you will get sample texts which you can put on the webpage to inform all other students.
