Efforts from the University Student Senate are easing the off-campus housing search for students.

The taskforce is pushing to revamp an often-unused University off-campus housing service by including landlord reviews.

“I think the whole point is to reevaluate the resources for students with finding off-campus housing as new buildings and new places to live continue to pop up all over the place,” said Henry Zurn, a senior in political science and English who is working on the efforts.

He pointed to the light rail, which allows students to live further from campus — and the growing volume of new apartments and landlords — as factors that have made selecting housing more difficult.

Currently, the Office of Housing and Residential Life has a listing service that lets students search for off-campus housing, but the website does not have tenant feedback.

“One of the major issues [with the current service] … is students don’t know about it,” said Scott Creer, the office’s coordinator of housing properties.

The low amount of website visitors led the office to put out a request for vendors to recreate the listing service. He said discussions to recreate the website began about four years ago, before the Student Senate approached the office.

The office hopes to have a vendor selected by February, but Creer declined to pinpoint a specific date the new system would be up and running.

He said the new service would most likely be a “one-stop shop for info,” and would include an option for previous tenants to leave feedback.

The office is targeting landlords that manage anywhere from 100-1000 units with the upcoming service, Creer said.

“I still think most students are gonna go to Craigslist,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re trying to be a competitor.”

The University Student Legal Service offers lease reviews to students. USLS director Mark Karon said 33 percent of the office’s cases are landlord-tenant related, and of those cases, 24 percent are lease reviews.

Como Student Community Cooperative Leasing and marketing manager Jessica Poirier said their units typically see a waitlist, and most people find out about it through talking with tenants.

The cooperative advertises on various listing services, such as Craigslist and the existing University listing service, but the most valuable advertising is word-of-mouth, Poirier said.

In previous years, the Minnesota Student Association would run a renter’s survey, where students could find ratings on various topics like security and landlord responsiveness.

The survey has not been given in recent years.