Student Housing and Public-Private Partnership
Old-school standard dorm-style living no longer makes the cut for today’s university students. Millennials, by nature, are social and tech-savvy creatures, but when you add a strong focus on academics and a looming competitive job market into the mix, student housing becomes a unique and targeted sector of the multifamily industry, and one that's quickly gaining momentum. Emerging only two decades ago as a market that was lacking attention, today’s student housing has transformed into a core real estate asset that answers the very specific needs of a niche rentership through well-designed projects. “You’re seeing a sector that’s really starting to modernize and evolve,” says William Talbot, chief investment officer/EVP at Austin, Texas–based American Campus Communities (ACC). Residents of Fountain Residential's Metro Park East in Minneapolis are provided with a fully equipped kitchen. Tiny shared bedrooms and communal bathrooms in midcentury dorm buildings are no longer desirable for students who are seeking privacy in their apartments. Indeed, most students want private rooms with in-room bathrooms and prefer suite-style apartment layouts. “With the exception of urban markets, there are very few projects where we wouldn’t recommend individual bedrooms and bed-bath parity in the unit design,” says Bob Clark, president of Peak Campus, a student housing developer and operator based in Atlanta. Student apartments at 33 North in Denton, Texas, have private bedrooms with in-room bathrooms. With a new focus on high-end development, managers use amenities, such as rock-climbing walls, golf simulators, and lazy rivers, to attract potential renters. However, these attention-grabbing amenities aren’t what keep students around. “If you’re looking for high-end customers, you want high-end amenities to attract the customer,” says Miles Orth, COO at Philadelphia-based Campus Apartments. “Your imagination can run wild, but location and price are what students look for overall.” Students want a trendy, affordable living space where they can study, socialize, and relax. Study spaces, high-speed Internet, and close proximity to campus are the fundamental amenities that make for a successful student housing complex. “The one thing we always say [to other multifamily companies] is that we have your future renters,” says Talbot. “The students we’re housing now will be conventional multifamily renters in two to six years, so we always feel like we’re on the forefront of product evolution, because we’re seeing that consumer before everyone else [does].”
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