About ten years ago I was attending San Jose State University and really needed to find a 1 bedroom apartment at a decent price (lol) in the downtown SJ area since I would no longer be living in the dorms.
I tried a few different ways of finding an apartment, but in the end it was one case where the old phrase "it's not what you know, it's who you know" worked in my favor.
During my freshman year I had found and been working a job on campus in one of the department offices (side note: if you're a student, you're best off trying to find a student assistant opening in a department office; at least at SJSU, most paid above minimum wage, were pretty lax and could be used for some study time, and you have so many opportunities to make connections with professionals).
One of my coworkers there had a family and they were living in one of these small ~8 unit apartment buildings downtown. It was a privately-owned building, not one of these newer, fancy conglomerate ones.
She connected me with the management/owner and long story short, I got a decently livable place with rent control for about 1/3 of market rate due to being a lower income student and taking a unit that wasn't recently refurbished (old carpet, old paint, etc.).
I tried a few different ways of finding an apartment, but in the end it was one case where the old phrase "it's not what you know, it's who you know" worked in my favor.
During my freshman year I had found and been working a job on campus in one of the department offices (side note: if you're a student, you're best off trying to find a student assistant opening in a department office; at least at SJSU, most paid above minimum wage, were pretty lax and could be used for some study time, and you have so many opportunities to make connections with professionals).
One of my coworkers there had a family and they were living in one of these small ~8 unit apartment buildings downtown. It was a privately-owned building, not one of these newer, fancy conglomerate ones.
She connected me with the management/owner and long story short, I got a decently livable place with rent control for about 1/3 of market rate due to being a lower income student and taking a unit that wasn't recently refurbished (old carpet, old paint, etc.).