Student Housing Occupancy

Student Housing Occupancy Increases While Industry Preps for Influx of New Deliveries

by Jeff Shaw

DALLAS — Occupancy at privately owned student housing properties is rising while construction of 2016 deliveries is ramping up, according to a report by Dallas-based Axiometrics.

Student housing properties were 96 percent occupied as of September. This rate was a 62-basis-point increase from the 95.3 percent occupancy rate in September 2014. Assets closer to campus had the highest occupancy rates, on average.

Throughout the 2015-16 leasing season, leasing velocity has averaged at or above the pace of the 2014-15 leasing season, with a leasing velocity of 95.7 percent as of the end of August. Annual effective rent growth has remained steady at two percent nationally.

Effective rent levels for properties less than a half-mile from the university averaged $646 per bed for the 2015-16 leasing season, up 2.4 percent from the average effective rent level for the 2014-15 school year.

Effective rent levels for properties located between a half-mile and one mile from campus averaged $542 per bed, up 1.8 percent from 2014.

The total new supply for fall 2015 was 47,830 beds, 24 percent fewer than the number of beds delivered for fall 2014. Deliveries for 2016 appear to be tracking at a similar pace with 48,216 beds identified to come to market by the start of the next school year.

Of the 78 universities with new beds delivered for 2015, 42 percent are expecting additional new beds in 2016.

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