Building student accomodation

[TMNT]

http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-vic-clayton-117253091

We all love to hate student accomodation, but thats mainly as a buyer,

im looking at depending on price of course, buying this, and building student accom,

the location is great for uni, but sux for IP or PPOR
due to the size of teh block you could get a lot of dwellings out of it,

but if you build a lot of student accomodations, you will probably need an onsite manager or a live in (which I dont plan to), im not sure if the agents in the area will be wiling to rent out so many high turnover tenants

anyone game enough to throw around some figures or ideas?

much appreciated SSers

 

[thatbum]

Seems like a waste if you can potentially develop "normal" units or townhouses there instead.

 

[vaughan]

Seems to me you're competing with the Universities themselves who are building their own accommodation (I'm thinking UTS and USYD in particular around Broadway and Ultimo).

How can you beat them, in terms of price and marketing?

 

[Brits]

I have a student unit on one of my properties (there is also a main house with other tenants). It has always been so easy to find a student to fill it at the start of every year. It is very close to Deakin uni with a bus going past it every half an hour straight to both campuses. However this year Deakin had built another 300 student residences on campus and I was really struggling to find a student for my unit. Other student set up properties around were struggling too. Deakin offered these residences at very low cost. They did it through that scheme (can't think of the name of it) where low income earners can rent cheaply because the govt subsidise the building of the accommodation. Because of that I had to offer my place more cheaply. I did find a student in the end but I would not have wanted to be trying to fill 5 or 10 rooms or units.

Also I once looked at a property with about six bedrooms and two bathrooms in it that I thought of making into student accom however when I looked into it there were new laws about ensuring it was disability friendly. To get it registered I would have had to widen doors, put in ramps, rails etc. It just wasn't cost effective. Glad I didn't now also because of these new residences at Deakin. I think unis will only increase their number of residences in the future. Places like Deakin have so much land and with the govt handing out money for them to build it is hard to compete.

 

[WASP]

There are some large companies involved here not dissimilar to retirement villages

In Perth you would be competing with Campus Living, however CLV owns, manages properties in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

 

[Mindmaster]

With 1388sqm, you could (STCA) build at least 7 2 bedroom units.

Units that could be rented out to students or normal tenants. Not as profitable as specialized student accommodation but much lower risk, allows you to sell 1 unit at a time after subdivision AND the banks should give you decent market level valuations.

 

[Aaron_C]

Student accommodation is over now. Dirty word.

 

[property_girl]

I think the only people making money from student accommodation units are the body corporate managers.

http://news.domain.com.au/domain/ho...udent-apartments-no-investment-bargain-201010
28-174x5.html

 

[Truly Exotic]

I had a look at this, wayyyyyy overpriced at $1.8m

$1300 per sqm on a main road!?!?!