Slim Student Applications

[Dave Poeppelmeier]

Hello fellow Student Housing investors, for those with Spring Student Rental seasons, did you get all of your rentals filled with Students? Our season runs from February to right about now, and I just filled my last vacancy by knocking $100/mo off the rent to the current group to get them to stay (one roommate was leaving). Things started off well in Feb/March but once April hit, student applications fell off a cliff. Did anyone else have a difficult time filling Student Rentals this year? I did fill a few houses with non-students because of this and I'm glad I did. 

[Will Gaston]

@Dave Poeppelmeier I'm 99% leased for this year and was 89% leased at this time last year. Not sure if that was due to COVID or not but that was about normal for me. For context I have about 150 student rental bedrooms in Columbia near the University of South Carolina.

The competition feels like it is 5x-10x what it used to be. It is much harder to fill mediocre property (i.e. nice but far away or crappy but walking distance to campus.) 

My experience is that the luxury student housing boom in Columbia has shifted this market in two important ways.

1) Parents and students expect to pay high rents. Rents are almost double what they were 10-12 years ago, which is a big deal in a market like mine. The high end student developments have given me the opportunity to raise my rents in line with theirs. 

2) With luxury property comes much higher expectations on what parents/students find acceptable. There seems to be an assumption that students have to live in high end housing to enjoy college. Again, I give the credit (or blame?) to this on the student housing developers.

I am still bullish on great properties in great locations but am selling lesser properties that don't meet that description. Vacancy in student rentals is not a lot of fun (ask he how I know).