The Scion Group is once again honored to be included in this year’s Power Panel at France Media’s Interface Student Housing Conference. Alongside other leaders, Scion’s president, Rob Bronstein, commented on the state of today’s industry:
“This is the strongest operating environment we’ve experienced in student housing both in terms of occupancy and rate growth,” noted Rob Bronstein, president of The Scion Group. “Last fall set a record pace with record levels and this year is going to beat it in every way — 97 percent or more occupancy and 8 percent to 10 percent rate growth with 15 percent to 20 percent net operating income growth — it’s really amazing.”
For Bronstein, this growth can be attributed to three factors. “The large flagship public universities where the majority of us own and operate assets are continuing to experience record enrollment,” he said. “At the same time, the percentage of students that these universities are able to house on campus is going down, so they’re having to rely further on what housing is available off campus.”
Another factor is the absorption from shadow-market assets into modern, purpose-built student housing properties, noted Bronstein. “A modern student and their family of course would prefer the safe, student product that we all own compared to what historically had been there,” he said. “New supply is also roughly 1/3 of what it was over the past few years. It has become incredibly hard for developers without long-term, core capital and a long track record in student to build anything because construction and land costs, as well as financing terms, are very prohibitive.”
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