A new report from the industry group RealPage indicates the extent to which the pandemic and certain societal trends related to higher education have impacted construction starts on private student housing developments nationwide.

The 175-school survey showed overall construction is now in a lag compared to the relative boom which took place throughout the 2010s when many colleges and universities adopted the more expensive luxury accommodation development model in an attempt to attract more undergraduates to campus. 

Across the country, college enrollments are declining as smaller regional institutions continue to merge or shutter while prospective freshmen fail to matriculate onto campus altogether. This has coupled with the effects of the pandemic on the construction industry to create a nearly 50% decline in new beds (from 50,000 to 26,000) when compared to the industry’s heyday a decade ago.

The University of Washington delivered the most beds this year (2,116) by far, followed by Virginia Tech and Indiana University. Georgia Tech is the only school expected to add more than 2,000 beds in the next year. Overall, the total number of new beds is expected to increase slightly in the same period to more than 31,000. (Not including the 4,500-plus beds included in UCSB's Munger Hall megadorm scheme, which is still planned.) 

“These challenges probably led to developers hitting the pause button on new properties in 2021 and into 2022,” RealPage’s Carl Whitaker told Construction Dive in reference to the industry-wide economic downturn caused by COVID. “But as fundamentals have improved, it appears the development appetite has as well. This year has a lot of potential to end up with the highest occupancy rate to start the school year since RealPage began tracking the sector roughly one decade ago.”