ATLANTA — Andrew Layton, chief acquisition officer for Atlanta-based Student Quarters, knows that from a commercial real estate investment standpoint, the student housing sector possesses a key advantage: the relative permanence of many flagship universities nationally. “There is no risk of the University of Kentucky uprooting itself from Lexington and moving to Frankfort anytime soon. In the conventional multifamily world, neighborhoods come, neighborhoods go. What was hot yesterday may not be so hot today. What was cold yesterday may be the flaming new market tomorrow. That’s just not the case in what we do,” emphasized Layton, who leads the origination and underwriting efforts involving both the acquisition and development of student housing assets for the Student Quarters’ investors. “There’s a sense of permanence [surrounding these academic institutions], and if you can get on the ground and do your due diligence, you can figure out relatively easily where things work and where things don’t work in a student housing market.” Student Quarters owns and operates over 13,000 beds nationally, stretching east to west from Clemson, South Carolina, to Tempe, Arizona; and north to south from East Lansing, Michigan, to Tallahassee, Florida. The insights from Layton, who’s worked in the student housing …
