and the Elite8 is published again!

Alpine’s baggage

You’d be a fool to think you can compare
rent on a 12-month contract to an
8-month fall/winter rate. Because the
value of a Provo apartment diminishes
between April and September, the real
cost of a 12-month rate for the fall/winter
season is higher.

Suppose you decide to live in Provo’s
fresh and spicy Alpine Village next
year. At $375/month, the total cost of
your 12-month contract is $4,500. But if
for spring and summer terms we value
an Alpine Village apartment at $225
(which is generous considering many
s/s rates are cut more than half), your
real rent rate for fall/winter jumps to
$450 to cover the total $4,500. Gulp.

So for 1 1/2 times as much as most
students pay to live south of campus,
you get a small flat screen TV, granite
counter tops, an excessively large
bathroom area, the same bed you had
in the dorms and a personal “desk”
that’s really a table crafted with fine,
laminated particle board and imported
powder-coated steel.

Anyone who buys into the novelty
of Alpine Village deserves to suffer
the premium price of living in, as one
current tenant describes it, a “super
sweet” place that’s “always charging
and fining you for something.”

If you’re smart enough to avoid this
front, then you’re also smart enough to
know there are plenty of places where
you may buy into a healthy social
crowd without the extra baggage of four
months’ rent that you don’t need and no
one wants.