Campus Housing Is ‘Flavor of the Month,’ a Developer Says

The campus-housing market may be “recession resistant,” says Daniel Bernstein, a senior vice president at Campus Apartments Inc., in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Mr. Bernstein told the newspaper: “You do have a population that is growing, and more and more people are turning college age.” He added that housing for college students had become the “flavor of the month” among developers, but he did offer one cautionary note: “You still have to choose the right markets, and you have to design a project that is right for that particular market or your project will suffer.”

Before you start clearing land for new residence halls, though, you may want to call your institutional-research office. An article by Elyse Ashburn in this week’s Chronicle warns that the number of high-school graduates is expected to peak this year and will then “begin a slow decline until 2015.”

Campus Apartments recently announced a deal with Emory University to build a $27-million, 398-bed housing complex on land the university is leasing to the company.