Morgantown Student Housing: What WVU Students Actually Pay

Morgantown student housing is the cheapest market in the set, and it is not close. Across the 44 student posts analyzed from the West Virginia University housing group this cycle, the median rent students reported was $559 per person per month, a figure that would be a rounding error on a single room in most college towns. What students here talk about is therefore not price so much as what that price includes: furnished came up more than any other topic, followed by roommate searches, lease takeovers, and parking. The floor plans they name are four bedrooms, one bed one baths, and two bed one baths. You can see what is currently on the market on the off-campus housing page for West Virginia University, and this guide covers what $559 actually buys in Morgantown, what the furnished premium is worth, and why the hills and the PRT matter more here than the number of minutes a map shows.

Begin your search at Off-Campus Universe, where you can browse current listings near Morgantown by price, bedroom count, and distance, then message the landlord or outgoing tenant yourself. Because Morgantown rents are low in absolute terms, the percentage swings between listings are large: the difference between $425 and $850 a month is the difference between two entirely different budgets for the year. Line the options up side by side, note which ones arrive furnished, and pay attention to which campus each one is near, because Downtown and Evansdale are a real commute apart.

Four listings on that page map the range almost perfectly. 670 is $425/month for a private room in a four bedroom, two bath duplex less than five minutes from campus, discounted 5 percent from $450, and that is $134 a month under the already-low $559 median. At $425 per room the duplex brings in $1,700 a month with four people in it. 252 Waitman Street is $700/month for a private room in a furnished three bedroom, two bath house, also inside five minutes, on a nine-month lease, which is $141 over the median and buys a room that arrives furnished. 2 bed/2 bath apartment is $1,175/month for a two bedroom, two bath apartment offered as a sublease, or $587.50 each, which is $28.50 a month over the median and buys each of you your own bathroom. 33 Highland Ave, Lower is $850/month for a one bedroom, one bath apartment within five minutes of campus. As a single-occupant unit that is your whole per-person cost, $291 over the median, and it is the honest price of not having roommates in this town. If a listing does not spell out whether the number is per room or for the whole place, ask, and run it both ways: on a four bedroom, a $1,700 whole-unit price and a $1,700 per-room price are $1,275 per person apart.

Sunnyside, South Park, Suncrest: Morgantown Neighborhoods and the Hill Problem

Morgantown is built on hillsides, and that single fact reorganizes the whole housing map. Sunnyside, immediately uphill from the Downtown campus, is the densest student area and the one where walking to a morning class is genuinely realistic, which keeps demand high even though the housing stock is old. Wiles Hill and the First Ward sit just beyond it with more houses and slightly lower rent, and the walk back up at the end of the day is the price of admission. South Park, across Deckers Creek, is the historic neighborhood with the best-looking houses and porches, close to Downtown on paper, though the return trip is a climb. Suncrest and the streets around Patteson Drive are oriented toward the Evansdale campus and the hospital complex, which makes them the right choice if your major lives on that side, and they tend to offer newer buildings and actual parking lots. Star City and Westover are the further-out value options where a car starts to look necessary. The equalizer is the Personal Rapid Transit system, the university-run automated shuttle linking Walnut, Beechurst, Engineering, Towers, and Medical stations. A place two blocks from a PRT station can be a faster trip to an Evansdale class than a place that looks closer on a map, so before you sign, work out which campus your classes actually meet on and how you get there when the PRT is down for maintenance.

Morgantown Student Housing: What $559 a Month Actually Buys

The honest answer is that the $559 Morgantown student housing median buys a private bedroom in an older four bedroom house or duplex within walking distance of campus, with roommates, shared laundry, and a landlord who has been renting to students for twenty years. That is a genuinely good deal, and the listings above show you can land under it. What it does not automatically buy is furniture, and that is the trade students here argue about most. Furnished was the single hottest topic in the group for a practical reason: nobody wants to buy a bed, a desk, and a couch for a nine-month lease, then sell it on a Facebook group in May at a loss. Expect a furnished unit to carry a monthly premium over an identical unfurnished one, and do the arithmetic before you dismiss it. If furnishing a bedroom yourself costs several hundred dollars up front and you cannot resell it for much, a modest monthly premium over a twelve-month lease can be the cheaper path, especially if you are flying in. Ask exactly what furnished means in that listing, item by item, because it ranges from a bed frame and a desk to a fully outfitted kitchen. Two more line items belong in your budget: utilities, which on an old Morgantown house with an aging furnace can be a serious winter number, and parking, which came up repeatedly in the group and is often either a separately billed space or a permit-only street where you circle for twenty minutes. Get both figures in writing and add them to rent before you decide anything is cheap.

Four Checks Before You Sign in Morgantown

• Walk the route uphill, at the hour of your earliest class. A ten-minute downhill walk to campus is a twenty-minute climb home, and that is the trip you will make every day.

• Get the furnished list item by item, in writing, and compare the monthly premium against what it would cost you to buy and then resell the same furniture over one lease term.

• Ask for a winter utility bill from the current tenants, along with the heating system and the age of the windows, because the headline rent is the smaller half of a January housing cost here.

• Settle parking before the lease. Find out whether a space is included, what it costs per month if it is not, and whether the street requires a permit you are eligible for at that address.

  
  

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.