The student housing market wrapped the fall 2023 leasing season with a 95.1 percent preleasing rate, falling behind last year’s final figure. Rent growth also slowed, dropping 0.9 percent since its peak in March. Nevertheless, the sector starts the fall 2024 season on a positive note, bolstered by record-high rents, according to the latest Yardi Matrix national student housing report.
Enrollment has rebounded in fall 2023, following a weaker performance in the fall of 2022. Across the 77 schools from which Yardi Matrix already gathered data from, enrollment increased by 0.6 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Preleasing was exceptionally strong at the beginning of the year, but the record pace started to decelerate in March. Compared to September 2022, preleasing dropped 1.1 percent on a year-over-year basis. The decrease is partly due to slow lease-up at properties that delivered in 2023, which were 84.4 percent preleased as of September.
A total of 31 universities were fully preleased at the end of the season across Yardi 200, while another 25 markets were 99 percent preleased. Large schools, such as Purdue, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Central Florida fell into this category. At the same point in time, seventeen schools achieved a preleasing rate of less than 85 percent. Many of these were smaller universities with five or less properties, with the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, comprising 32 properties, among them.
Rents are still near all-time highs
The average rent at Yardi 200 schools was relatively unchanged in the four months trailing the end of the leasing season, stabilizing at $846 per bed in September. Rent growth slowly decreased since reaching its highest mark of 7 percent this year in March, dropping to 6.5 percent in August and 6.1 percent in September.
Year-over-year rent growth averaged at 6.3 percent throughout the fall 2023 leasing season. A total of 33 markets registered double-digit rent growth in September, hitting a 97.2 percent preleasing rate in-between them. Other universities with urban campuses and a significant amount of new supply entering the market, struggled to increase rents.
Read the full Yardi Matrix report.
