Small and lakeside. The housing office is genuinely helpful, which is not true everywhere.
Small enough that the university housing office actually knows the local landlords. Worth emailing them directly before paying anyone to search.
Apply to the FUN residences the day you are admitted — the list runs 2 to 5 months, so it rarely helps for your first semester, but it costs nothing and it helps for your second. Everything else means the private market.
File your residence permit dossier about three months before you arrive; processing runs eight to twelve weeks and nothing downstream starts until it is in. Register at your commune within fourteen days of landing, and sort health insurance within three months. The full timeline.
Campus is at the city centre. Choose your neighbourhood by commute rather than by postcode — a cheaper room forty minutes away costs you two hours a day for a year.
Most University of Neuchâtel applicants get stuck on the same thing: an agency that wants someone resident in Switzerland to co-sign. We do that, for 3 months' rent — after we have read your file, and we do decline some.