The student-housing industry has largely recovered from the pandemic as student housing leasing has passed pre-pandemic levels despite news of decreased enrollments, according to the latest report from Yardi Matrix.
The preleasing period for the fall 2021 term ended stronger than in 2019, and leasing is off to another hot start for the upcoming fall term, at 26.7 percent as of November.
Annual rent growth is also nearing pre-pandemic levels, at 2.2 percent as of December, just below 2019 levels of 2.4 percent rent growth.
Yardi Matrix says all of the Power Five conferences are experiencing growth in preleasing for the upcoming fall term compared to the previous year, particularly the Big Ten conference. Universities in the Big Ten had the highest percentage preleased (40.0 percent) and the highest prelease growth (18.7 percent) as of November.
Also, universities with the most annual prelease growth as of November tend to be bigger schools—of the top 20 universities with the most prelease growth, the average total enrollment was more than 30,000 students.
- The 200 universities included, called the Yardi 200, showed strong rent growth in pre-leasing for fall 2022.
- The average rent per bedroom at Yardi 200 universities for the fall 2022 school year was $791 as of December. “This is the highest average rent for off-campus dedicated student housing we’ve seen in years and $2 over the previous month’s high-water mark,” Yardi Matrix said in the report.
- The average rent per bedroom as of December represents a 2.2 percent increase over the previous year and a 0.3 percent increase over the previous month. That’s up from December 2020’s 0.9 percent annual rent growth and a bit below 2019’s annual rent growth of 2.4 percent. Nonetheless, it’s a positive sign for the industry to see rent growth inching toward pre-pandemic levels.
