The choice between renting an apartment or a house is complicated. In this moment, I would argue it is best to just rent an apartment.

Right now, the housing market is somewhat in chaos. As a result of various factors like inflation and an uncertain economic outlook, rent prices for houses fall between reasonable to downright absurd.

That’s not to say apartment prices are entirely immune from this craziness in the market, either. But the prices, one could argue, are at least more tolerable when taking the average student finances into account.

Housing prices range with differences of thousands of dollars, whereas apartment prices differ by hundreds of dollars. Still a big difference, but at least less painful on someone’s wallet.

There are other aspects that make renting an apartment preferable compared to renting a house as a college student.

One of the more convenient parts of living in an apartment is that there is less maintenance to do. Because we live busy lives as college students and aren’t home often, keeping the place nice and tidy can be more challenging than one would think at face value.

A house takes more effort to maintain and keep clean. Especially the exterior, as renting a house could potentially require you to mow your lawn and keep it relatively clean compared to an apartment which doesn’t have a lawn for you to maintain.

Overall, renting a house and an apartment both have their benefits. But the apartment is better because its simple convenience, and that’s what we really all prefer in our lives.

Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.