New apartments downtown
Zaragon Place is about to open up in downtown Ann Arbor in May. It's crazy expensive: they offer two bedrooms for $2000-$2500 per month (aka 24k-30k a year) and they've got this six bedroom that takes up two floors and goes for 6k-6.5k per month (72k-78k per year), giving people new opportunities to spend more on housing than they do tuition. Oh, and keep in mind the prices don't include any utilities other than cable and internet. They're furnished with flat screen tvs and all sorts of other fancy furniture. And while they're cool, yes, I don't know who's going to rent them.It's one thing to pay $1250/mo plus utilities to live at your own one bedroom apartment, but it seems like it would be really hard to find another person that wants to do that so you get a two bedroom together. And I realize that people get 6 bedroom houses together, but they do that to save money because it's cheaper when you split something six ways.
Another intersting thing about this place is they allow people to sign individual leases. Everyone's responsible for their own rent rather than being jointly responsible. It sounds good if you think about the "what if a roommate skips town and we are responsible for his rent" scenario, but at the same time if that roommate did skip town, the Zaragon people would be able to fill that vacancy themselves and you could end up with a random living with you.
click to view full inside brochure:
