August student housing pre-lease data from RealPage Market Analytics shows occupancy and rent growth have reached new highs.
As of August, the last full month in the pre-lease season, 95.7% of student housing beds at the core 175 universities that RealPage tracks were pre-leased for the fall academic year. This rate, according to the firm, is the highest reading on record and is expected to rise in this month’s final on-site occupancy reading. The figure rose 430 basis points from July’s record rate.
Rent growth also trended much higher than average during the pre-lease season. Year-over-year effective rent growth reached 5.9% last month, outpacing a typical August rate by around or under 2%.
According to RealPage, effective rent growth was strong for all distances, led by 6.2% year-over-year growth in properties located over 1 mile from campus. Those within a half mile from campus saw rent growth in line with the average of 5.9%, and those between a half and 1 mile saw year-over-year growth of 5.6%.
In the RealPage 175, about a quarter of the schools were completely pre-leased as of last month, with over 80% of schools being at least 90% pre-leased.
“No true laggards exist in the dataset, proving this year’s strong student housing performance spans geographies and university type,” reported RealPage. “Similarly, very few universities report rent cuts as of August, except a couple schools with yearslong enrollment woes or supply challenges.”
