OT MGoUndergrads/Alums High Rise vs Single Family Homes

One side effect of the high rises is that owners of single family homes have attempted to upgrade their properties to compete. However, I would say it's primarily a price point discussion still. The high rises cater to a more luxury crowd... personally I wouldn't trade my student ghetto basement apartment in a Kerrytown mansion for a deluxe building with a workout room for all the tea in China.  

don't live next to ricks senior year

all honesty though, i loved living in 6-7-8 bedroom houses. most of those people are my best friends to this day.

I lived in the dorms for two years. I sometimes wish I'd stayed longer, and now I would in a heartbeat given how plush the dorms are these days. But if she's insistent on bailing, and I'm reading your post correctly (which, honestly, I might not be...)...

I'm not sure what you mean by "single family home," because 99% of the houses you'd rent on campus are houses subdivided into apartments, or houses in which you're renting a bedroom and share the rest of it with your housemates. The new campus highrises strike me as the kind of places the rich kids from the East Coast get their parents to rent for them, but that's just outside observation...

For my money, find a nice apartment down Kerrytown direction and put her in it. You're not going to get ripped off on a shitty place like you'd find on South Campus. I lived up there for three years and never had a problem, had great landlords, had a neighborhood with a mixture of undergrads, grad students, and real people, and never had to deal with the crap my friends did down near the stadium.

In case you haven't already done so, think about this abstractly. What does your daughter want in her living environment? What would she rather avoid?

Echoing others, the location, price, and condition of the unit are what would be important here. High rises aren't the same as houses, but the approach to both should be the same.

In undergrad, I lived in a year each: dorm, apartment, fraternity house, off campus house in the hill neighborhood. 

and if you're a person that values your privacy a single family home is the only way to go.

I still have a noise complaint letter my wife and I received at our first apartment.  It was surprisingly graphic about the volume of noise our neighbor could hear at 3am.

I'm sure none of that would ever apply to your daughter though.

Old, shitty, crumbling house with good friends like we all did.

Single family home was the fun way to go.  Plus my cupboard under the stairs cost me about $200 a month. 

I lost my virginity in an apartment in the University Towers on South U.

The houses are decent and are a decent price. I always got the impression that the high rises were for rich kids from long island, NJ, and CT. The prices on those high rises are nuts.

Whatever she decides, it's going to be relatively slim pickings this time of year. When I was in school most houses in good locations were leased for the following fall by November, December at the latest. Some of the apartment buildings do have vacancies open later in the school year.

Other than saying I had great experiences in apartments (not luxury) and houses while living on campus, I won't attempt to advise you there. However, I will say that the timing here is all wrong. The best houses are already signed for in October/November the year before so options are already quite limited there depending on how many friends your daughter is planning to live with.

There were no high-rises way back in the middle ages (maybe save 1), but my best friends in life today, 25 years later, are the guys I lived with over on Kingsley.  My GF from those days lived on Elm with a group of other girls in a much more run down place but they seemed not to notice it.

Remotely if, either of my kids were to goto UM, I would strongly encourage the same.  

The high-rises seem like a profit-taking experience for the well-heeled parent.

Lived in houses my junior and senior years, with five friends. Great experiences, the most fun I had in college. Even weekly grocery shopping was fun. Incidentally, Jim Harbaugh lived at the end of our street on Packard with a couple other players, can't remember who. 

After freshman dorm life, I lived in a fraternity house for 2 years and an apartment my last year.  The apartment was by far the best.  It was in a 3 story building that was maybe 8 years old on Tappan south of the B-school.  WIth 3 roommates, life was easy to manage and we all got along well.  Landlords were a nice hippie lady and her boyfriend.  Anything wrong was fixed promptly.  Fraternity house had way too many distractions, well, too many people that created distractions.

My daughter lived in a sorority for a year.  It was a nice house, but it was full of distractions like my fraternity.  Her grades proved that.  My daughter then lived in the overpriced slum houses that are chopped up into multi-room units.  The house was on Packard a block or so down from Campus Corners. There were 7 girls in a house setup for 8 (assumed 2 would live in the large basement room).  She loved it, but I thought it was a rip off given the price paid for the rent.  The landlord was not the best at fixing things and the place looked pretty beat up when you got past the fresh coat of paint, but hey, we are talking college life.  Housing takes a beating.

Dorms: Sounds like this may not be an option, but the new dorms are fully renovated and look quite nice even compared to my freshman year (of course they renovate the year I move out!). The meal plans are a rip-off though on a per-meal basis unless you do the unlimited plan.

High-rise:
- North Campus: I lived in The Courtyard, good quality & amenties, far cheaper than equivalent apartments on Central Campus. Definitely a bit boring as there isn't a whole lot to do on North, but the location is convenient if one is studying engineering or art & design.
- Central Campus: Excellent perks as far as living near restaurants, bars, & amentities with gym, hang-out area, laundry, parking etc. Most high-rises will do roommate matching if needed based on preferences such as noise level & whatnot. As far as price, I would recommend looking at Sterling 411 Lofts (I lived there for two years). Sterling 411 prices are far more reasonable than other Central Campus high-rises. My rent was around $800-$850 a month with 4 other roommates with utilities included. Still a bit pricey, but a far cry from $1200-$1500 a month.

House: I never lived in a house in kerrytown or south campus, but had plenty of friends that did. Definitely the cheapest option & from what I've seen/heard the most fun. In hindsight I would have chosen this option FWIW. The previous posts in this thread do a good job describing these.

Good luck with the search!

but considerations change whether she is actually looking to live with a bunch of friends or not.

A crappy house (or part thereof) with a bunch of friends is almost always the best $ decision and absolutely the most fun.  You learn a little about keeping an actual house running,(depending on quality of landlord)  and a LOT about sharing space.  

Can make a difference if she's all by heself though as that could be lonely or have security issues.  

 

I'm not talking about the building but your daughter. Would you describe her as being slightly high maintenance and/or demanding or is she more carefree and independent? There's also the issue of perception of safety. I think the bottom line is that you get more building and amenity quality from a high rise and you get more "character" from a house or small apartment building. Some people think "quality" = boring/antiseptic and "character" = seedy.

In the high rises, everything is fairly new and it works. Common areas are more likely to be kept clean. If something breaks, you know who to call and it probably gets fixed quickly. The building is relatively secure and you don't have drunk guys creeping around in your bushes looking for a place to vomit on a Friday night. Parking (if a car is even in the equation) is more likely to be reserved, covered and secure. There are single family homes, SFH converted to apartments and small apartment buildings that are well maintained and managed and in very quiet neighborhoods, so it's not impossible to achieve a higher standard in a house or smaller apartment building, but you still will probably fall short of what you get in the high rise buildings.

Like many on here, I loved the houses/small apartment buldings that I lived in and wouldn't have traded that experience for a high rise. Then again I am the type of guy who once I moved away from home I never made my bed again and and I considered a couple of cases of empty beer bottles as a perfectly acceptable piece of furniture. I am not a post-millenial girl. Also, compared to other places I have lived, Ann Arbor is rather safe, but if I had a 19 year old daughter, I might not mind the idea of her being in a secure building.

I'll caveat all of the above with the fact that I graduated over 20 years ago and I haven't been to Ann Arbor in 10, but my guess is things are more or less the same.