Anecdotes
When looking at places in nice neighborhoods, I found that when people asked me what I did, they reacted much more positively to "I'm a teaching assistant at NYU, where I'm also a grad student" than to "I'm a grad student at NYU, where I also teach some."
Ned's survey
This link is a survey Ned conducted in 2011 about where people were living, how much they were paying, and advice they had for searching. This link is Ned's 2006 survey.