Features

Sarah-Watts

The importance of video content as a touchpoint with potential residents is rapidly growing in the student housing industry. Owners and operators of student housing are innovating more than ever to reach students, producing various types of video content from reels touring an apartment, to funny community TikToks and ‘3Dx’ virtual tours. Creating this dynamic, fast-paced video content is an opportunity for the industry to relate to the current generation of college students that leasing teams shouldn’t pass up. Why is video content growing in importance? If the massive success …

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  The April 27 webinar “You Have Eight Second – How to Market Student Housing in 2023,” hosted by Student Housing Business and sponsored by Conversion Logix, was driven by questions about how best to appeal to Gen Z: How should student housing owners and operators leverage platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram to get messages in front of students? What does the future hold for automation and AI in student housing? What are the best practices for seamless integration into chat, SMS and email marketing? What trends and values are characteristic of Gen Z’s inclinations? Why …

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Interior-Design

Generational tastes may be involved, but student housing interior design isn’t about reinventing the wheel each time a new cohort comes up through the ranks. It’s about finding a way to provide that demographic with the type of housing environment that will allow them to thrive academically, socially and personally.  “Design strategies for a student housing property go beyond following a color trend, art style or material accent,” says Kelly Naylor, interior design practice leader and senior partner at BKV Group in Minneapolis. “Design is a tool that can be …

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State-Industry

One of the most popular panels at the InterFace Student Housing conference each year is the ‘State of the Industry’ session, which takes a close look at the current state of the sector and the outlook for the year ahead. This year’s panel, moderated by President and CEO of PeakMade Real Estate, Bob Clark, was no exception.  The first topic — unsurprisingly — was the banking crisis, which Isaac Sitt, co-founder and principal of Vesper Holdings, believes to be far from over. Chief amongst a number of concerns for Sitt …

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Stacey Lecocke Asset Living Property Management

In times of slowing economic growth, property owners and developers frequently shift their attention away from expansion to focus on portfolio optimization. In turn, that can put added pressure on property management firms to perform at a high level. At Asset Living, a Houston-based manager of conventional and affordable apartments, build-to-rent communities, active adult and student housing, executives are emphasizing people, processes and technology to ensure that their clients achieve success not just during a slump, but in any economic environment, says Stacey Lecocke, who, as an executive vice president, …

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Over the past few years, centralization of leasing efforts has become one of the hotter topics in the industry. Much of this conversation has been a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which sparked a period of evaluation for many companies as they both dealt with staffing challenges and looked to run their businesses and properties as efficiently as possible. At the fourth annual LeaseCon/TurnCon conference, which took place in December 2022 at the Hilton Uptown in Charlotte, North Carolina, a panel of owners and operators discussed their views on …

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vantage

Cardinal Group was started by four friends who had a simple mission: buy student housing and operate it well. What started as a small portfolio has grown larger and larger over the years, and with it Cardinal’s management abilities. The company’s management arm, Cardinal Group Management, has become one of the country’s top 5 student housing managers. Alex O’Brien, one of Cardinal’s founding partners, serves as the company’s CEO. SHB recently spoke with him regarding trends in the industry, and particularly how technology is having an impact on student housing …

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  The March 28 webinar “Student Housing Case Study — Partnering with a Custom Furniture Fabricator Brings a Vision to Life,” hosted by Student Housing Business and sponsored by Morgan Li, covered important questions in the world of student spaces. This hour-long presentation focused on case studies in the industry and what can go right when partnerships take on design goals, modular approaches, production issues and more — as a team. Learn more about these topics and more: The benefits of modularity and why it’s becoming so popular. What design trends are students excited about? Design …

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The Dickson Furniture Manufacturing plant

Selecting a vendor for off-campus student housing furniture means considering many moving parts to keep a complicated process moving forward. To talk timing, process and practical considerations for furniture, Student Housing Business sat down with Kris Benson, director of sales at Dickson Furniture Manufacturers, a U.S. company that specializes in designing, engineering, building and coordinating the delivery and installation of student housing goods. When considering purchasing furniture for a student housing property, Benson recommends the following checklist of important questions to streamline the process: What is your timeline? Who are you …

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Knightshade

Student housing investment sales ended up with a relatively strong year in 2022. The industry saw a total volume of $22.87 billion; removing the ACC/Blackstone take private transaction, the industry had $10.07 billion in sales, according to CBRE. That second number is just slightly under 2021’s total of $10.17 billion in investment sales. However, taking a deeper look, more than half — $6.37 billion — of sales occurred in the first half of 2022, with $3.7 billion trading in the second half of the year. In 2021, the opposite occurred, …

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