If you are searching for a rental near Furman University, there is something you should know before you spend an afternoon on it: most of the pages targeting this search are pitching student housing, and Furman's residency requirement means most undergraduates are not in the rental market at all.
That changes who the housing near campus is actually for. Here is who rents here, what is available, and where to look.
Furman Is in Travelers Rest, Not Greenville
Furman's mailing address says Greenville, which sends most people looking in the wrong direction.
The campus sits on US-276 between the two towns, and after an annexation in the early 2010s it is inside the Travelers Rest city limits.
So if you are searching "near Furman" and filtering to Greenville listings, you are searching the far side of the campus from the town it actually belongs to. Travelers Rest is the closer housing market, and it is the one with detached houses in it. (That annexation also skews the town's census figures in ways worth understanding, which we unpack in our renter's guide to Travelers Rest.)
Why Undergraduates Are Not the Rental Market
Furman has a four-year residency requirement, and roughly 97% of its students live in college housing. It is a residential campus by design, not a commuter school with an off-campus housing belt around it.
Like most residential colleges, Furman grants exemptions in defined circumstances, so the undergraduate rental market is sharply limited rather than nonexistent. But it is limited enough to explain why the "student rentals near Furman" search results feel thin and generic. Roughly 2,400 undergraduates, nearly all of them housed on campus, do not generate the off-campus market a large state university does.
If you are a parent hoping to rent a house instead of paying for a dorm, confirm the current residency policy and exemption criteria with Furman's housing office before you go any further. That call, not a rental search, is the thing that decides it.
Who Actually Rents Near Furman
Four groups, and they want very different things.
Faculty and staff. This is the largest group by a wide margin. Furman's own economic contribution study, published in 2019 and covering the 2017-18 fiscal year, reported 1,125 direct employees. That is the most recent official figure we could confirm and it is several years old, so treat it as a floor rather than a current headcount. Professors, administrators, coaches, facilities and dining staff, and IT all need somewhere to live, and unlike undergraduates they are not housed.
Graduate students. Furman's graduate enrollment is small. U.S. News reported 171 graduate students as of fall 2024. Worth knowing before you count on this group: some of Furman's graduate education programs are offered fully online for working teachers, so not every graduate student needs to live near campus at all.
Visiting faculty, postdocs, and sabbatical stays. Short and medium term, usually furnished-preferred, usually one or two people.
Families visiting or relocating with a student. Parents who want to be nearby for a semester, or a family relocating to the area because of the university.
What those groups have in common is that they are adults, often with a partner, kids, or both. That points at a house rather than a room near campus, which is the opposite of what most "near Furman" listings offer.
What Renting Near Furman Really Means
There is very little rental housing immediately adjacent to the campus. The realistic options fall into three buckets:
| Option | What it looks like | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Apartments toward Greenville | Complexes down US-276 on the Greenville side | Single staff, grad students, tight budgets |
| Older houses in Travelers Rest | Scattered, older stock, varies widely in condition | Anyone prioritizing price over condition |
| New construction rental homes in Travelers Rest | Detached, built 2020 onward, three to six bedrooms | Faculty and staff with families, longer stays |
The third category is the one that barely existed a few years ago. We build and manage 46 single family rental homes in Travelers Rest, all built between 2020 and 2024. We are the owner, so this section is a sales pitch and you should read it as one.
What It Costs
Our published starting rents run $2,000 to $2,800 a month across eight floor plans from 1,593 to 2,689 square feet, which works out to $0.94 to $1.26 per square foot.
| Floor plan | Beds / baths | Square feet | Starting rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Westwood | 3 bed, 2 bath | 1,593 | $2,000 |
| The Fairmont | 3 bed, 2.5 bath | about 1,778 | $2,000 |
| The Calhoun | 3 bed, 2 bath | 1,814 | $2,000 |
| The Highland | 3 bed, 2 bath | 1,821 | $2,000 |
| The Ashton | 4 bed, 3.5 bath | 2,340 | $2,200 |
| The Wildwood | 5 bed, 3.5 bath | 2,440 | $2,500 |
| The Edgewood | 5 bed, 4.5 bath | 2,453 | $2,500 |
| The Heritage | 6 bed, 4.5 bath | 2,689 | $2,800 |
These are starting rents, meaning the lowest monthly rate we publish for a given bedroom count. A specific home can be quoted higher depending on the plan, finishes, and lease term. The Fairmont is built in a few slightly different footprints across the community, so its square footage moves a little from home to home.
For context on the wider market, Zumper put the median rent for a house in Travelers Rest at $1,995 as of August 6, 2026. We are not the cheapest option in town and we do not claim to be. Older, smaller houses here rent for meaningfully less. What you are paying for at our end of the range is new construction, more square footage, and a landlord you can call directly. There is a full breakdown in our guide to what it costs to rent a house in Travelers Rest.
The Commute to Campus
Both our community and the university are in Travelers Rest, on the same side of Greenville, so this is a short local drive rather than a commute in any meaningful sense.
We are not going to publish a drive time we have not measured across a week of real mornings. Map it from a specific address at the hour you would actually be going in.
There is also a genuinely useful alternative: the Swamp Rabbit Trail runs directly through the Furman campus. It is paved and close to flat. For a faculty or staff member living in Travelers Rest, a bike commute to campus is a real option rather than a nice idea, which is not something most university towns can offer. Our Swamp Rabbit Trail guide covers access points and what the surface is actually like.
What to Ask Before You Sign
Whoever you rent from, near Furman or anywhere:
- Who is the landlord? A local owner-operator and a national single-family rental fund behave very differently when your HVAC fails in August.
- What is the lease term, and does it flex? Academic-year timing rarely matches a standard twelve-month cycle starting in June. Ask early.
- What is the total move-in cost, not just the monthly rent? Deposit, any pet fee, first month, and anything else due at signing.
- What is actually included? Lawn care, appliances, and who handles what.
- Is it zoned where you think it is? Both Travelers Rest and Greenville sit in Greenville County Schools, but attendance zones vary by address.
If You Are Weighing Travelers Rest Against Greenville
That is a fair question and it deserves more than a paragraph. We wrote a full comparison for renters, including where Greenville genuinely wins, in Travelers Rest vs Greenville for renters.
To see what is available now, browse our floor plans and rental homes or contact us directly. We are the owner, not a listing service, so the person who answers can tell you what is actually open.