There is housing available in Ithaca at any time of the year. Some people arrange their housing many months in advance, while others begin several days in advance!
Most graduate students rent apartments. (``Lease'' and ``Rent'' are essentially the same). To rent an apartment, you typically sign a lease, which is a contract that protects both you and your landlord. Most leases last for 12 months, and many leases in town expire on either June 1 or August 1. (Note that since many people move on those days, it is hard to rent a moving truck then!) Some companies, including Cornell University, offer 10-month leases in some cases.
If people sign a lease and then leave town for several months, they often try to ``sublet'' their place during these months. If you rent a sublet, it can be a convenient way to find a good place for little money for a short time. You can (and should) request to sign a sublease agreement (a contract similar to a lease) to make your sublet official. This will help you avoid losing money, as well as proving that you were a resident of Ithaca during that time.
A landlord is someone who takes care of a rental property. Your landlord may be the actual owner of your apartment, or a professional property manager. We strongly reccommend that you keep your own records of what you paid you landlord, and when, for confusion about accounting is surprisngly common.
Several agencies and services exist to help you find housing. Many local landlords maintain rental offices and will be happy to show their apartments to you. Some openings will be listed in the classified ads of the Ithaca Journal and Ithaca Times. Others, especially sublets, may be found online on CLICK HERE or on the cornell.marketplace newsgroup. The Cornell Housing Office maintains a listing of apartments available for rent that can be sorted according to several different categories. You can access this list at the following website CLICK HERE. They also have a list of local apartment complexes (includes price, distance to campus and other info) which you can pick up at their office in 201 Robert Purcell Campus Center (E1). Finally, Housing Solutions in Collegetown will help you to find your ideal living space, for a small fee.
A small number of graduate students decide to purchase a house. This can make sense if the value of the house is increasing rapidly. While this is common in places like California, it is very rare in Ithaca. Another downside is that in the early years of a morgtage, your payments mostly go to interest and not to priciple. Thus you build very little equity, and are mostly just replacing payments to a landlord with payments to a bank! On the bright side, interest payments on a morgtage are tax deductible, so this may reduce your taxes significantly. In conclusion, think carefully before considering this seriously, investments of this size can be financially destructive for your entire life if they go wrong.