Luxury student rentals: Threat or passing fad? | Real Estate and ...

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A recent Wall Street Journal article dove into the rise of real estate builders coordinating with universities to build rental units for a niche group of students wishing to pay more for luxury housing.

Trends Driving the Market

If you are working with college student rentals, there is a pretty good chance that you have seen the competitiveness for your units rise in recent years. You have probably also increased the rent on these units as well.

What you are seeing in the market is supply and demand in action caused by too few beds for the number of students arriving at college every year. To put this into perspective, the Wall Street Journal cited that many of the roughly 3 million high schoolers graduating every year are looking for higher education. Another factor driving luxury off campus units is a growing population of parents that are ?willing to pay for luxury amenities,? according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Win by Amenities

Remember that time when your heater broke when you were a student? That is a thing of the past at these complexes.

Lazy river swimming pools, custom furniture, exclusive clubhouses, and granite counter tops. Luxurious to say the least. These builders are beating out the competition on the amenities they can offer to students that go far and above the typical college rental experience.

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Threat or Fad?

Even though these are nice options for college students, they are just that, options. These units are being built for the few, rather than the many.

But the underlying trend of student tenants desiring nicer living conditions remains true. An off campus house is no longer just a place to crash after a long day of classes. It is a home.

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Now, are you going to compete with these builders on features? Probably not, but in the same way property managers can learn from the best aspects of dorm life, these luxury student housing development experiments can give smaller property managers insight into what students really want in their off campus house without the risky investment. In all likelihood, you won?t be adding a tanning bed to your unit anytime soon, but here are three amenities every college student finds valuable in their off campus house.

Source: http://www.zillow.com/blog/pro/2012-12-10/luxury-student-rentals-threat-or-passing-fad/

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