Trends in the current student housing market

University enrollment trends can be an indicator for the student accommodation sector, but it depends on which universities are being examined. Looking forward a decade, there will be a 3 percent aggregate enrollment growth for all of higher education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That number is compared to the numbers collected during the early 2000s, when the aggregate enrollment growth was 3.8 percent per year.

“The super macro demographic enrollment projections are not relevant to student housing because the student housing that we are talking about is at the top 50, top 100, maybe top 175 universities, not all 5,000 post-secondary educational institutions,” says Fred Pierce, president and CEO at Pierce Education Properties. “So we need to home in on what is going on with enrollment growth there, and in that case it is 1 to 2 percent per year in America’s top universities. That’s healthy, that’s strong and that’s the real outloo