Students looking for off-campus housing can now use Cribspot, a website that helps students find off-campus housing.

Founders, Tim Jones, Jason Okrasinski and Evan Dancer have created Cribspot. Cribspot helps students by bringing all available housing options together on one website. 

The website allows students to easily filter through different housing options. Cribspot lets students contact landlords through the site, rather than walking around campus or Googling numerous sites to find what they want. 

“With Cribspot, students can come to one site, and it’s all there,” said Tim Jones, chief technology officer of Cribpsot.

The founders were seniors at the University of Michigan when they struggled to find off-campus housing for the third time. They decided they wanted to create a site to help other students at the university who were struggling to find housing like they were.

“We knew that if we could bring all this stuff together on one site, students would really love it,” Jones said.

They talked to landlords and got as many listings they could find. They proceeded to build the website during the summer and launched it in the fall of 2013. It was a big hit at the University of Michigan, and they decided to expand the website.

Brad Bjustrom, junior in agricultural systems technology, said he would probably use the site if he needed to look for off-campus housing.

“It sounds like an easy and useful tool to find housing in the Ames area, and I would use the site,” Bjustrom said.

Shalane Mahal, junior in event management, has been apartment searching and said a website such as Cribspot might be helpful.

“I had to do some apartment searching recently and it was [a] hassle trying to find different apartments,” Mahal said. “I think that it is a great idea and I would definitely use the site.” 

The Cribspot team continued to raise funding in August 2014 and with that money, they expanded the website as fast as they could. Cribspot is currently helping students at 123 schools across the nation. Students seem to have trouble finding off-campus housing everywhere, so the site has really been a hit.

Jones said he is happy to see the site expanding because that means they are solving the problem.