More than 50 different housing vendors will advertise their properties to the approximately 2,500 CSU students attending this year’s Housing Fair on Tuesday, March 5 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Lory Student Center Main Ballroom.

The benefits of the housing fair are unique, as no online method of house-hunting allows potential tenants to meet dozens of landlords face to face within a short amount of time.

“The advantage of coming to the housing fair is you get to meet the people that you’ll be renting from,” Off-Campus Life Director Jeannie Ortega said. “You can tell a lot about a place by how they represent themselves in person,”

CSU’s Off-Campus Life has been putting together the student housing fair for over a decade to combat the issues students face finding housing. The housing fair is mostly just for information –– a place for students to meet prospective landlords and peruse their properties.

“Hopefully it’ll be a one-stop shopping place for students to gather all kinds of information,” Ortega said.

Properties of all kinds will be advertised for rent tomorrow; apartments, houses, duplexes, townhomes and all sorts of addresses ending in numbers and halves.

“There’ll be a nice variety for students to look through and find out about,” Ortega said.

But with various Internet tools available to find housing nowadays, some students don’t see the point in attending the housing fair.

“I’ve never been to the fair; it’s so easy to find housing I feel like,” senior biology major Bardy Huskey said.

There are more important factors than a dream home in finding good a place to live next year though. Students moving into their first home or apartment need to adjust to maintaining and taking care of their property, dealing with financials and negotiating their roommate relations.

“Students need a little more information on carbon monoxide, or smoke alarms, or how systems in a house work,” said Rick Reider of Homes by Campus Touchstone Property Management. “Then even qualifying them, they don’t often have jobs –– they don’t have credit history so you have to know how to help them,”

There are always a few key things students should look for in renting, and then rules maintained amongst roommates to keep the peace for the duration of the lease.

“Make rules up that everyone can live with –– and read the lease agreement, please,” Heritage Park Property Manager Tiffany Leiper said.

Possibly the most important thing to remember when signing a lease is that it is serious business.

“This is a contract that you’re singing, a legally binding contract, for up to a year, so it is important you know who you’re renting from and what the lease terms are,” Ortega said.

Collegian Writer Matt Gabriel can be reached at news@collegian.com.