A New Generation of Student Housing Is Raising the Bar on What It Means to Live Near Campus

Student housing has always been easy to underestimate. For most of its history as a distinct asset class, it was defined by proximity to campus and not much else. The amenity package was an afterthought. The design was generic. The assumption baked into nearly every development decision was that students would tolerate whatever they were given because their options were limited and their stay was temporary. That assumption has been wrong for a while, and the wave of new student housing breaking ground in 2025 and 2026 makes the case conclusively. What is being built right now isn’t an incremental improvement on the last generation of off-campus housing. It is a fundamentally different product, one that treats students as discerning consumers with sophisticated expectations and designs explicitly around their actual lives.

The luxury baseline has moved considerably, and the amenity packages being delivered across the current development pipeline reflect how far the category has come...   ...more

RSK: It means much higher rents with some amenities you probably will hardly use.