By: Mahmoud, Alec, Stephanie

Introduction  The purpose of this report is to help college students determine which four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment best fits the needs of UNT students.  The research included asking UNT students to fill out surveys that measured how important they think different aspects of an apartment are and if they have favorite apartments. Using these results, we evaluated the apartments based on four different criteria. Using the survey participants’ ratings on how important these criteria are, we recommend the apartment that best fit their preferences to be Midtown.

Methods  We conducted research in two phases. The first phase consisted of having UNT students fill out surveys that evaluated their preferences about apartments. We asked students in the UNT Willis library, Bruce Cafeteria, and Kerr Cafeteria to fill out surveys. We chose these crowded locations on the UNT campus in order to get the most participation and diverse opinions.

Survey 1

Methods Continued..  The survey helped us determine what UNT students are looking for in an apartment, how much they would be willing to pay for a four-bedroom, four- bathroom apartment, and why they prefer a certain apartment over others. The most important question we asked was “Do you have a favorite apartment” because we used the top four apartments chosen by survey participants to conduct the second phase of our research.

Methods Continued..  In phase two of our research, we collected the following information about Sterling, The Republic, University Courtyard, and Midtown: Is the apartment is furnished? Does the apartment allow pets? How close is the apartment from UNT? How old is the apartment?  We combined the results from the first part of the survey, which gave us insight into what criteria the students thought was most important when searching for an apartment, with the results from our research of individual apartments in order to determine which apartment best fit UNT students’ preferences.

Results

Results Continued..  According to survey results where we asked students to briefly state how much they were willing to pay for a four-bedroom, four- bathroom apartment, on average survey participants were willing to pay $457 for a four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment.

Apartment Criteria Results ApartmentsFurnishedAllow PetsCloseness to UNT Newness MidtownYes 0.9 mi.2010 SterlingYesNo0.5 mi.2011 University Courtyard YesNo2.0 mi.2008 The Republic Yes 2.3 mi2011

Recommendations  We recommend Midtown to UNT students looking to rent a four-bedroom, four- bathroom apartment close to campus. Midtown Apartment rent was only $13 above the average amount survey participants expected to pay, and it tied with University Courtyard for the lowest rent for a four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment.  According to our survey results, the price was the most important criteria when selecting an apartment. Closeness to UNT was the second most important factor to survey participants, and Midtown was the second closest.  Sterling was the first closest, but we chose not to recommend Sterling because the rent was $176 above what the average rent survey participants wanted to pay. Although five participants listed Sterling as their favorite apartment in the survey, Sterling also received the most negative comments in the “Any additional comments?” section of the survey.  Although Midtown was the third newest apartment, it was only one year older than Sterling and The Republic. The majority of survey participants listed newness as “neither important not unimportant,” so this factor did not weigh as much in our decision as opposed to price and closeness to UNT.  Even though survey participants thought that the pet-friendliness of the apartment was “unimportant,” Midtown does allow pets. Overall, we recommend Midtown because it fits the criteria that our survey participants voted as most important.