Grad students may be less likely to roll a keg down the stairs, but there is one way they’re riskier for student housing owners than the Animal House guys. EdR’s Jeff Resetco, who’s speaking at Bisnow’s Baltimore Higher Education & Student Housing Summit on Jan. 30, tells us grad students often don’t know where they’ll be studying until the spring, and that means waiting to sign apartment leases.
So for EdR, East Baltimore Development, and Otis Warren’s 929 Apartments at 929 N Wolfe St—which targets grad students—that means doing most of the marketing at housing fairs and open houses when potential grad students are in town and then locking down leases later. It's worked so far: The 321-unit, 572-bed property (above, EdR's tallest) is 95% leased (and remember that occupancy is static for a year in student housing). It helps that this one is across from Johns Hopkins Medical and that med students usually stay put for three years. For more traditional student housing projects, Jeff says, some of EdR’s properties already are full for the '14/'15 school year, and it’s started leasing some for fall 2015.
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