As somebody going to study in the U.S., I had no idea where I was going to sleep,\u201d said Azamovich. \u201cI ended up couch-surfing on my friends\u2019 couches for almost a year. Had my parents known about this, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to stay even a single day in America.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Together,\u00a0Azamovich<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nazarov<\/a>\u00a0vowed to find a solution for other students in need of safe, convenient and affordable student housing. One by one, they helped more than 10,000 students and young professionals find homes the hard way \u2014 offline. The customers include IIE, Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program, KAUST and U.S. State Department sponsored education exchange programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the technology became readily available, they considered launching their system globally online. The 4stay.com beta website<\/a> was launched in June 2017 as an online housing marketplace to help more students around the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Akobir Azamovich and Faridun Nazarov came to the U.S. as international students in 2007, they found securing reliable housing to be one of their greatest challenges. Dorms were full or too expensive, apartment managers wanted to lock in a one-year lease, classified ad web pages weren\u2019t secure and off-campus roommate-matching was a disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Together, Azamovich and Nazarov vowed to find a solution for other students in need of safe, convenient and affordable student housing. Since 2010, they helped more than 10,000 students and young professionals find homes the hard way \u2014 offline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the technology became readily available, they considered launching their system globally online. The 4stay.com beta website was launched in June 2017 as an online housing marketplace to help more students around the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds of thousands of students went \u2014 and are still going \u2014 through an experience similar to Azamovich and Nazarov\u2019s. European think tank Class of 2020<\/em>\u2019s 2018 annual trends report<\/a> lists financial burden, insufficient student housing and lack of short-term accommodations as top issues for international students. Their study found almost half (45%) of international students have difficulty finding higher ed housing, and many find costs higher than expected. About one-third of international students don\u2019t believe they got good value for the money spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFinding student housing, signing a lease and finding a roommate can be really hectic and stressful for any student,\u201d said Nazarov. \u201cInternational students also face long-distance living, assimilating into new cultures, learning new languages and academic pressures.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Companies like 4stay and their partners seek to accommodate many of these housing challenges by offering instant booking of rooms, homestays, and apartments. The 4stay marketplace now offers over 100,000 rooms in over 160 countries, with everything from dorms to private, fully furnished apartments for short or long-term stays. Users can search available listings based on factors such as cost, location or amenities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThink of 4stay as an \u2018AirBnb\u2019 for students and young professionals who need longer stays,\u201d said Azamovich.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Azamovich and Nazarov\u2019s solution resolves two major hurdles in the international student housing industry: Availability and technology. As some still remember, it wasn\u2019t always so easy to find housing with the click of a button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As digital economy has become a fact of life, the \u201cInternet generation\u201d now expects instant results and \u201cquick fix\u201d solutions. Many aspects of their lives are impacted by technology, including their decisions to study or live abroad. Everything from choosing an academic institution to finding learning materials can now be done online. Tomorrow\u2019s college students have access to 10 or more smart devices<\/a> and expect seamless device-to-device connectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re a housing company, but we\u2019re also a tech company,\u201d said Nazarov. \u201cThat means we\u2019re committed to keeping our software updated for the needs of our users and partners.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The company will soon roll out a SaaS (software-as-a-service) model, which could be used by housing companies, higher education institutions, homestay and student housing companies to manage their inventory. Many U.S. dorms are left unused during summer breaks, and a partnership with a company like 4Stay allows these companies to make extra rental income. 4stay\u2019s software helps universities rent out unoccupied dorm space during summers to pre-approved student or intern tenants, providing an efficient \u2014 and lucrative \u2014 solution for the schools\u2019 unused spaces. Their platform provides the necessary technology, background checks, user verification and dashboards to manage housing requests. Universities such as Manhattan College in New York City (home to 4,000 students) and Marymount University in Arlington, Va., (minutes away from the nation\u2019s Capital and home to over 3,000 students) are already collaborating with 4stay to manage their unoccupied dorms and apartments. Additionally, 4stay\u2019s website easily integrates with MobilityScore, which uses real data to analyze nearby transportation options for students (such as bikeshares and ridehailing services, like Uber).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor students exploring their housing options, there\u2019s no better tool for understanding how they\u2019ll get around their new city,\u201d said Rachel Karitis, director of marketing at TransitScreen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n These initiatives have been well received by others in the education and housing industries, including community colleges, language schools, universities, homestays and student housing companies who have partnered with 4stay.com. Other notable customers include IIE, the Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program, KAUST and U.S. State Department-sponsored education exchange programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the biggest community colleges in the U.S., Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), as well as Stratford University, Georgetown University and the University of North America, and other universities have connected their campuses to the 4stay marketplace, giving students easy access to off-campus housing. INTERLINK Language Centers also recently joined 4stay to provide its six language centers with global student housing booking technology. Study abroad agencies such as Gradtrain.com (based in Israel) and Ubergrad.com (based in India) that recruit and place thousands of international students in graduate and undergraduate degrees across the world also recently joined 4stay\u2019s marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, language centers at Indiana State University, Montana State University, Columbia West College, Boston International Academy, Seattle Pacific University, St. Ambrose University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Valparaiso University will be able to use 4stay\u2019s SaaS-enabled online marketplace. Other language institutions have found 4stay\u2019s software helpful<\/a>, including the Bilingual Education Institute, Excel English Institute, GEOS Languages, Hoft Institute, College of English Language, New York English Center, New Jersey English Center, Inlingua and the Forum English Center. Prior to joining these institutions, students will have a special link to a wide variety of available properties around their campus (whether they land on a homestay or shared apartment).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conventional housing is not student friendly; it requires 12 month leases, large sums of deposits, and is unfurnished\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_singular_sidebar":"left","csco_page_header_type":"default","csco_page_load_nextpost":"default","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-longtermhousing","8":"cs-entry","9":"cs-video-wrap"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4482,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/4482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.4stay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The international student housing crisis<\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Tackling student housing technology<\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Partnering for a cause<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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