Tradition on the 50 Tuscaloosa: Price, Lease Terms & Amenities (2026)

Tradition on the 50 Tuscaloosa: Price, Lease Terms & Amenities

Tradition on the 50 is a Landmark Properties community at 801 Frank Thomas Ave, about 1.5 miles from campus — close enough to Bryant-Denny that “on the 50” is a reference to the yard line, not a highway. It is purpose-built student housing in the full sense: leased by the bed, furnishing available, utilities bundled, individually locking bedrooms, roommate matching.

It is also a property where the advertised monthly rent is not the number you will actually pay, for two specific and documentable reasons. Both are worth understanding before you tour.

Snapshot

Floor Plans and What’s Actually Available

Tradition on the 50 publishes plans from one bedroom up to five. What it currently has to rent is a much shorter list. As of publication, these were the plans showing availability:

Everything else — the A1 and A2 one-bedrooms (638 and 650 sq ft), the B2-HC two-bedroom (1,008 sq ft), and plans D1, D2A, E2, E3 and E4 — was listed as sold out.

That matters more than it looks. If you are a student who wants a one-bedroom near the stadium, Tradition on the 50 is effectively not an option this cycle regardless of what the floor plan page shows, and you should be looking at the other complexes near campus instead. It also tells you something useful about the property: the small plans go first, which is what you would expect at a location people want.

Note the inverse pricing, too. The five-bedroom is cheaper per person than the four-bedroom, which is standard for by-the-bed housing — you pay less per head for sharing a building with more people. There are also optional $10-a-month premiums for top-floor, pool-view and stadium-view units on some plans.

The 50-Week Lease

This is the detail most worth your attention. Tradition on the 50 advertises an 11.5-month, 50-week lease term, with payment divided into 12 equal monthly installments.

Read that twice. You make twelve payments for slightly less than twelve months of occupancy. The installment schedule is a convenience — it lines your rent up with the months of the year — but it is not the same thing as the lease length, and it means the advertised “monthly rent” and your actual cost per month of living there are not identical numbers.

The practical questions to ask the leasing office are narrow and specific:

• 01What are the exact lease start and end dates, to the day?
• 02Does the term cover the gap between when spring semester ends and when your next lease begins — or do you need somewhere to go?
• 03When is the first installment due relative to the move-in date?
• 04If you renew, does the new term start the day the old one ends?

None of this makes a 50-week lease a bad deal. Academic-year terms exist precisely because a 12-month calendar lease forces students to pay for a summer they spend at home. But you should know which one you are signing, and the fine print is where that lives.

What Rent Includes — and What It Doesn’t

Included: water, electricity, trash, cable and internet. That is an unusually complete bundle, and it is the single biggest reason a $1,399 per-person rent here is not comparable to a $625-per-person share of a conventional two-bedroom elsewhere in town. Add utilities to the conventional number before you compare them.

Not included: parking. Private parking is $130 a month and tandem parking is $80 a month. Over a lease year that is roughly $960 to $1,560 on top of rent — the equivalent of about $67 to $109 a month added to the advertised figure. At 1.5 miles from campus, a car is optional for getting to class but not for much else, so price this in deliberately rather than discovering it at signing. If you are weighing going car-free, our guide to getting to UA campus without a car is the place to start, and there is no property shuttle here — see which UA complexes do run one.

Pets are allowed, dogs and cats, with a $400 one-time fee, $35 per month per pet, and a 100-pound weight limit.

Amenities

• 01Pool, fitness center and clubhouse
• 02Controlled access, gated entry and key fob entry
• 03Individually locking bedrooms — the structural feature that makes by-the-bed leasing work
• 04Study lounge and roommate matching
• 05Washer and dryer in every unit, tanning salon, furnished units available

Every floor plan listed is bed-to-bath matched — four bedrooms, four bathrooms; five bedrooms, five bathrooms. For a shared apartment that is worth real money in daily quality of life, and it is not universal even among student properties.

Reviews

There is no meaningful published review data for this property yet — Apartments.com showed no renter ratings at all as of publication. That is not a red flag in itself, but it does mean you cannot outsource the judgment. Tour in person, ask to see the actual unit rather than a model, and if you can, talk to someone who lives there about how quickly maintenance requests get answered.

Before You Sign

• 01Add parking to the advertised rent before you compare against anywhere else. It is $80–$130 a month.
• 02Get the exact lease start and end dates in writing, and check the gap at both ends.
• 03Confirm whether the unit you are shown is furnished and whether that changes the rent.
• 04Ask whether utilities are truly unlimited or capped with overage billing — bundled electricity often carries a monthly allowance.
• 05If you use roommate matching, ask what happens if a matched roommate defaults or leaves.
• 06Photograph the unit’s condition at move-in — see our security deposit guide.

Our Tradition on the 50 listing page has the property’s contact details.

Frequently Asked Questions