Visitors might also be interested in the Guide for Graduate Students (PDF) which contains information on costs of staying in the Stanford area. Also see Graduate Student Handbook (Student Life) and Postdocs Handbook (housing)
[The following is now out-of-date, go to http://www.stanford.edu/dept/fsh/rentals/ instead] The first thing you should do, well before your arrival, is send an inquiry to the following e-mail address:
Rental.Housing@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
They should send you back a reply containing the following information. I quote:
"If you have a computer with a modem, you can dial directly in to our database to view the housing listings as often as you wish. If you would like to pursue this option, you will need to mail or fax us a copy of your admission letter or some other confirmation of your affiliation with Stanford which is written on official stanford letterhead. We cannot supply you with the account and password you will need to enter our database without a confirmation of your affiliation.I faxed them a copy of my letter of invitation and received a reply back on the same day with instructions on how to access and search the on-line off-campus housing list."If you wish to send us a copy of your affiliation to receive a computer account please send it to Community Housing Services 110 Old Union, Stanford, CA 94305-3012, or fax it to (650) 725-2954. Please be sure to indicate somewhere that you would like us to send you computer account information, and also indicate whether you would like to receive it by mail or email. If you would like to receive a custom list, please email us for further information."
[End of out-of-date info. You may need a sunet id to access some pages, contact your Stanford department for how to get one] This list may provide some leads for you, but you should not rely on this list too exclusively. If you search under the categories of "temporary" and "furnished" you probably will not find much. Mostly you'll find rooms for rent, which are generally literally a room in somebody's house with a bed in it. From what I have seen, I think it would be quite risky to rent a furnished apartment or house sight unseen. But you may search under the categories of apartments and maximum rent to find large apartment buildings that regularly have some turnover. I had thought that I might be able to sublet from a faculty member, but there was nothing like that listed.
Another place you might be able to check in advance is the yellow pages telephone directory. Your university library may have microfiches of the Palo Alto yellow pages. Check under "apartments" for listings of some of the larger apartment complexes.
The strategy I recommend is this: Reserve a room in a hotel for a couple of days. (The Cardinal Hotel, an old hotel in downtown Palo Alto, was fine. Telephone: 650-323-5101. The housing office can send you a list of hotels.) When you are here, get the latest listings from the on-line housing list (either get someone at CSLI to help you access it from a remote terminal, or go directly to Old Union). But also look up "apartments" in the yellow pages telephone directory to get the names and telephone numbers of the larger apartment complexes that regularly have turnover. Also, check the weekend edition of the Palo Alto Weekly, which you can pick up at newsboxes in downtown Palo Alto.
With these sources in hand, call around looking for an UNFURNISHED apartment. When you find a vacancy, you might have to try to persuade the manager to rent it to you for the short period you are staying. Try offering to pay a little extra rent. That worked for me.
Then RENT furniture. This was surprisingly affordable. I got everything I needed (a queen-size bed, a large table, two chairs for the table, a reclining armchair, a free-standing reading lamp, and a nightstand) for $110/month plus a $75 delivery-and-pickup fee from Cort Furniture (tel: 650-966-1758). It takes them two days to deliver after you've placed your order. There are also other furniture rental places.
If you must reserve a place in advance of your arrival, you could probably safely reserve an apartment in a large complex near to the University, provided you don't insist on the lowest possible rent, and then contact a current visitor by e-mail and ask him or her to go check it out. Everybody here seems pretty friendly, so I'll bet you could get someone to do that for you.
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