US: A new report from software provider RealPage has revealed a drop of nearly 50 per cent in new student bed starts in a decade.
The survey of 175 higher education facilities showed overall construction has fallen due to falling college enrollments as smaller regional institutions continue to merge or close.
This has combined with the effects of the pandemic on the construction industry to create a nearly 50 per cent decline in new beds (from 50,000 to 26,000) when compared to the industry’s heyday a decade ago.
“These challenges probably led to developers hitting the pause button on new properties in 2021 and into 2022,” said RealPage’s Carl Whitaker. “But as fundamentals have improved, it appears the development appetite has as well. This year has a lot of potential to end up with the highest occupancy rate to start the school year since RealPage began tracking the sector roughly one decade ago.”
The University of Washington in Seattle delivered the most beds this year (2,116), followed by Virginia Tech and Indiana University. Georgia Tech is the only school expected to add more than 2,000 beds in the next year. Overall, the total number of new beds is expected to increase slightly in the same period to more than 31,000.
