Furnished Apartments Morgantown: What's Actually Included

A Morgantown listing that says 'furnished' might mean a bed, a desk, a dresser, a couch and a kitchen table waiting for you on move-in day, or it might mean a mattress on a metal frame and four empty rooms. Furnished apartments Morgantown landlords advertise show up constantly in WVU student housing posts, and the appeal is obvious: if you are flying in from out of state, transferring mid-year or taking over somebody's lease in January, not having to buy a bed frame in August and resell it on Facebook in May is worth real money and a real weekend. But 'furnished' is not a defined or regulated term anywhere in a standard lease, and the gap between the photo in the listing and the inventory in the unit is exactly where students get burned. The scrape of WVU student posts behind this batch puts the median at $559 per person per month, which is the lowest figure in this entire batch of schools. That low baseline matters here: a furniture package that adds even a modest amount per month is a far bigger percentage of your rent in Morgantown than the same package would be almost anywhere else. Start with what is actually listed on the WVU off-campus housing page.

Begin your search at Off-Campus Universe, where you can browse current listings near Morgantown, compare them by distance from campus and see the real asking price on each one. The four below are the sourced listings behind this article, with the per-person math run against the median.

33 Highland Ave, Lower is listed at $850/month for a 1bd/1ba apartment less than five minutes from campus. A one-bedroom is a one-person cost, so that is $291 above the median, which is what living alone costs in this market. 2 bed/2 bath apartment at $1,175/month is a 2bd/2ba sublease, also under five minutes out; split two ways it comes to $587.50 each, only $28.50 above the median, and sublease or lease-takeover situations came up constantly in WVU student posts. Charming and recently updated 3-bedroom asks $1,400/month for a 3bd/1ba house under five minutes from campus, which is $466.67 per person across three roommates and $92.33 below the median, though one bathroom for three people is its own kind of cost. 670 is the cheapest here at $425/month, a private room in a 4bd/2ba duplex already discounted 5% from $450, landing $134 under the median. Four-bedroom units are the floor plan WVU students name more than any other, and that listing is a good illustration of why: dividing a house four ways is what keeps Morgantown affordable.

Sunnyside, South Park and the PRT Line

Morgantown splits along the two campuses, and where you live decides how you get to class. Sunnyside sits directly above the downtown campus and is the densest student area in town, mostly older houses and purpose-built student buildings within a walk of the Mountainlair; it is convenient, loud and priced for the convenience. South Park, just across the creek, is quieter, full of larger older homes, and still walkable to downtown for anyone who does not mind the hill. First Ward and Wiles Hill run a little cheaper as you move north. Evansdale is the other pole, near the Health Sciences campus and the Coliseum, which matters enormously if your major lives out there. Suncrest, Star City and Westover stretch further out with more square footage per dollar, and Cheat Lake is a genuine commute. The thing that ties it together is the PRT: the university's personal rapid transit system links Walnut, Beechurst, Engineering, Towers and Medical, and a unit near any of those stations is functionally closer to class than a house twice as near on a map but on the wrong side of a hill. Check the PRT's operating hours and its scheduled downtime before you assume it solves your commute, because it does not run around the clock.

Furnished Apartments Morgantown: What to Get in Writing

When you tour furnished apartments Morgantown landlords list, treat the word as a claim to be itemized rather than a feature to be checked off. Appliances are not furniture: a refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, microwave and washer-dryer are appliances, and a listing that says 'furnished' while meaning 'has a fridge' is more common than you would like. Ask for an itemized inventory attached to the lease listing every piece of furniture in the unit, its room and its condition, and ask for photographs dated the week you sign. Get specifics: a bed frame with no mattress is a real scenario, and so is a twin XL when you assumed a full. Ask who replaces a broken couch or a failed mattress mid-lease and at whose cost, because a furniture package the landlord will not maintain is a liability rather than an amenity. Ask whether the furniture is bundled into the rent or charged as a separate monthly add-on, and whether you may decline it and use your own. Finally, ask how the furniture is handled at move-out: if the inventory is attached to your security deposit, every scratch on a desk you did not scratch is a deduction you will be arguing about in June, and the dated photos are the only thing that will win that argument for you.

Four Checks Before You Sign a Furnished Lease

• Demand an itemized furniture list as a lease attachment. Room by room, item by item, with condition noted. If the landlord will not attach it, that answer is itself information.

• Photograph everything on the day you get keys, including the underside of mattresses and the backs of desks, and email the photos to yourself so they carry a date stamp you did not set.

• Separate the furniture cost from the rent. Ask what the same unit rents for unfurnished, and compare the annual difference to what buying used furniture and reselling it in May would actually cost you.

• Check mattress and bed size in writing before move-in. Twin XL, full and queen are three different shopping trips for sheets and three different amounts of floor space in a small Sunnyside bedroom.

Ready to find your place? Browse all listings at Off-Campus Universe.

This article is provided by an independent housing resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by West Virginia University.