A Look at the Most Active Markets for Student Housing Development

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A Look at the Most Active Markets for Student Housing Development
Here are the five schools in the U.S. where developers will open the most new beds of student housing for the start of the school year.


Student housing developers are playing it safe and building most of their new projects close to the largest universities.

“Tier one markets continue to attract the most development and are still being targeted by the institutional capital that is pouring into the space,” says Taylor Gunn, student housing analytics lead for data company MPF Research.

This late in the real estate cycle, developers are no longer focused on the search for undiscovered markets, where few or no developers have gone before. Instead, they are betting on universities where the demand for student housing has been strong and is likely to get stronger.

Here are the five schools in the U.S. where developers will open the most new beds of student housing for the start of the school year in the fall of 2018, according to MPF Research.

“Many of these schools are being targeted because of their enrollment growth, market fundamentals or health of the state’s economy,” says Gunn. “We’re still seeing tier two and tier three universities being targeted, but not at the same volume.”

Florida State University — 2,700 Beds

The demand for student housing properties around Florida State University has been very strong for a very long time. “It is consistent. This is a market that looked good even through the recession,” says Jamie Swick, senior associate in the national student housing group for real estate services firm Colliers International.

Developers plan to open 2,700 new student housing beds in the market for fall 2018, making it the busiest market nationally. However, demand should be strong enough at the university to absorb the new supply, says Swick.