For starters, it's red hot. When Scotty Eyanow, a broker at Compass, was recently showing apartments near NYU, he says there were 30 groups of roommates looking at the same apartment. "It was an incredible amount of traffic," he says. And it's not just other students you are competing with but renters of all ages and income brackets.

Sure enough, Jacqueline Kurtz, an agent at Coldwell Banker Warburg, says some buildings that are close to campuses tend to get a lot of students. "Since students usually don’t have income yet, they will be open to guarantors. As well, the buildings might be more open to sharing and also have common areas that tenants can hang out in—lounges, fitness centers, and outdoor terraces."

Eyanow's advice is to get all your paperwork prepared and be ready to act quickly. You also need to do your research: Some buildings actively court students but others don't or won't allow out-of-state guarantors. Ask your agent about all these issues up front and find out exactly what is needed to land the apartment.

These and other tips are unpacked below to help you find a temporary home away from home.

Often enough, the only way students can rent in NYC is by having a guarantor—usually a parent or guardian—who agrees to be legally responsible for the rent in case you default. Just as landlords have income requirements for tenants, they also have requirements for guarantors, and they are steep: A guarantor must typically earn 80 times the monthly rent because they need the ability to cover their own housing expenses as well as yours. That means for an apartment with a monthly rent of $4,000, a guarantor must earn $320,000.

Your guarantor needs to be prepared to supply plenty of paperwork as part of the application, including proof of employment, a CPA letter if they are self-employed, their most recent tax returns (usually the past two years) as well as an asset statement, which shows funds in a checking or savings account. There's also the standard credit check.

If you don't have a relative who can step in as a guarantor there are workarounds. You can use an institutional guarantor like Insurent, which has lower annual income requirements. Jeffrey Geller is the company's founder and says their program is accepted in around 9,000 participating buildings representing over 725,000 rental units. "Insurent normally prequalifies renters 24/7 within one hour, and issues the guaranty within 24 hours," he says.

A landlord typically wants a lease to end between June and August, as summer is the easiest time to fill apartments. Eyanow says right now some landlords might ask for 14-month leases and give two free months but ask you to pay the net effective rent instead—which means the two-month discount is divided up and applied to your monthly rent.

If you are paying a net effective rent, it's important to know what your gross rent is, meaning what your rent would be without a discount, because when it comes to renew, any rent increase will be based on the gross rent, not the net effective.

"It’s a little bit of a strategy there," Eyanow says. For example, if you're being asked to pay $3,500 net effective for 14 months, your actual or gross rent is $4,080.

You can easily figure out your gross rent using Brick Underground’s Gross Rent Calculator.

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If shacking up with someone your age doesn't thrill you, or you like being able to do a good deed while saving money on housing expenses, consider home sharing with a senior through the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which allows one of the participants to be 18 or above so long as the other is at least 60 years of age. (You'll make your grandparents proud.)

When it comes to making a good match, you’ll want to check out Brick Underground’s 21 best questions to ask potential roommates. And don’t forget the roommate contract—which is a good way to avoid conflicts big and small.

If you take this path, you should know the difference between a sublet and a lease assignment. With a sublet, the original tenant stays on the lease and there's the assumption they will return at some point. With a lease assignment, the original tenant moves on and you take on the lease. For more on this, read, "Renters beware: 14 things to look out for in that lease" and "How to break a lease in NYC."

Your best bet is to hire a licensed real estate agent who specializes in short-term rentals or use a reputable short-term rental agency or listing site. These places don't have the 40 times rent income requirement and have flexible lease terms (but are still beholden to the 30-day-minimum rule). Rents are typically more expensive, but if you can cover the rent without having to show deep pockets, this might be a good workaround.

Just beware of short-term rental scams and know that co-op buildings have restrictions on subletting and condos can require minimum and maximum lease terms.

Li Chuang, an agent at Compass, says buildings that forgo share restrictions and those that allow guarantors for larger two and three-bedroom apartments are actively catering to students, recent grads, or other groups that have starter apartment criteria.

"Institutional landlords or landlords who don't live or directly manage their buildings are likely to be less interested in maintenance and more interested in capitalizing on the steady stream of student housing demand, especially as tuition continues to skyrocket," Chuang says.

Places like Educational Housing Services and Student.com specialize in buildings that cater to college students. EHS has four student-only buildings across NYC, two of which are summer only but the other two—St. George in Brooklyn Heights and The New Yorker in Midtown—have year-round rentals and come with a communal kitchen, study room, screening room, pool table, flat screen TVs and access to fitness clubs.

Student.com lets you search for rooms by university and to restrict the results to student-only buildings (though your options will be cut by half) as well as by price and room type; you can also tick the boxes for "no visa, no pay" or "no place, no pay" cancellation options in case you fail to secure a visa or get accepted into the college. EHS accepts guarantors but Student.com requires full payment upfront.

There are also co-living operations that welcome students (and young professionals) such as Harrington Housing (with multiple locations), The Alabama (near NYU), and

Whatever route you take to finding an apartment, one big way to save is by avoiding the broker fee. In the New York City rental market, brokers who are hired to represent the landlord's interests get paid by the renter—it sounds absurd and has been part of various legal disputes—but the fee can be one month's rent or up to 15 percent of the year's total rent.

And if you want to avoid that scenario, limit your search to no-fee apartments—and there are even buildings like Silver Towers (Times Square) and StuyTown (East Village) that proudly tout their no-fee status.

As Gerard Splendore, a broker at Coldwell Banker Warburg, sums up the situation: "Of course, students are a protected category and cannot be denied access to rentals if they are financially qualified," but because renters who share an apartment are supposed to be on the same lease "it can be a complicated process." Some use parents as guarantors who are "out of state, divorced, and not living together, again complicating leases and paperwork." You practically need a PhD in real estate to navigate the quagmire.

So who can blame you if you wave the white flag in surrender and decide to make a go of dorm life. Besides saving your sanity, it could save you serious money over renting off campus. And why not try and become a resident advisor and get some or all of the cost of your room and board subsidized in return for being on duty? That way you are building your resume along with your bank account.