Upperclassman Grudge

You walk into your buddy’s apartment and you instantly know you’re standing in a good-enough-for-college-kids apartment. The makeshift bedroom walls are made out of leftover pieces of drywall with exposed seams. And the kitchen is made up of randomly assembled leftover cabinets, located with absolutely no rhyme or reason. The patchwork carpet remnants have seen better days, but do match the threadbare couches. Well matching at least in the sense that they’re all pretty crappy.

This mentality is dated. Of course some students will settle. You know, the Animal House types that just don’t care, but most students desire and have come to expect a little more. Living in good-enough-for-college-kids apartments is fun for a year, maybe two, but the fact is that students are spending more and more time in college. As the years pass, maturity increases and students are willing to pay you a little more for a quality place to call home for a while.

So what do students want?

Think home, minus the parents. Students today want you to give them fresh paint on the walls, crisp clean carpet, and a kitchen that has decent appliances. Students want a nice bathroom, and larger bedrooms. Often with upperclassmen you’ll find that five people in a house is too many. Finding two or three friends that you can live with is better than packing in five or six. That charm of the early college days wears thin after awhile and everyone is happier with more privacy.

So why should a landlord care?

You will reap the benefits of supplying premium housing to these students because these students are willing to pay more. A quality place to live is desirable to students, with fewer headaches for you and it will ultimately result in more cash flow. You will find that students are much more likely to respect a nice, well finished apartment than they do the good enough ones so you will be less likely to have to make expensive repairs.

Of course, there will always be a need for good enough, and the rentals will always be available, but the fact is there’s a growing and expanding market for higher quality, higher priced rentals. Those of you who make the leap, leaving good-enough-for-college-kids apartments behind will find yourselves in new territory. But that territory will have you feeling the benefits and tucking more cash in your billfold.

Tags: student expectations, upperclass

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Campus Life, Landlord Business Tools, Tools, Tips, and Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.