Due to the increased cost of living because of inflation, I’ve been wondering if renting an apartment or house off campus is still affordable for college students as of today, depending on where the college is located?
Since my college was located in a small town (less than 10k students) off campus housing ranged between $300 - $800 a month, depending on the type of apartment or house.
I would have to believe in NJ off-campus housing would be horribly expensive as rents have gone up a huge amount in two years and availability is low. Those schools that have a fair amount of housing are probably a much better bargain here.
Rowan might be the exception, it is in South Jersey and fairly far from Philly, getting somewhat close to Vineland the cheapest part of NJ basically.
I’m sure it varies widely. South Dakota State (go Jackrabbits!) might be different than NYU.
Roommates are also a factor. If you can squeeze enough in the individual cost goes down. Freshman dorms had four people to a bedroom at the Ohio State University. Renting half a house with 6 people the second year was heavan compared to that.
This. Housing costs in general vary hugely by location, so I wouldn’t expect it to be any different for off-campus college housing. So I don’t think it’s possible to give a general answer to the thread title’s question, without knowing where we’re talking about.
I live in a college town (San Luis Obispo/Cal Poly) where a common strategy of parents is to buy a home in town for their children to live in for four years. When they sell it, they not only recoup all their housing costs, but tuition, as well. Students can also make about a $1000 a month for each additional student they share the home with.
Nothing about university education is affordable, compared to what it was like in the past. I have little patience or tolerance for those old pharts who go on about how lazy kids are these days.
I have direct and personal experience with university students, and they are struggling to afford their education more now than at any time in recent history. Where I am, tuition has outpaced the rate of inflation for decades. Off campus rental accommodation is insane. Average 1 bedroom apartments now go for $1800/month. Not remotely affordable, as salaries have not kept up. Of course, this goes for every renter, not just students.
Googling, the median sale price of homes in San Luis Obispo is something like $900,000, so I imagine only a select few parents can afford to buy a house just for their kid to live in while at college.
(Though I went to college in the late 1980s and the same strategy was suggested.)
Housing prices are nuts here, which makes the strategy fool proof as long as you can get the mortgage. Most of the “student-owned” homes are dumps when they are bought and no better when they are sold so they’re usually well below the median price.
The University I went to grad school in, and where my brothers got their undergrad degrees is in a small town far from any major urban center (at least four hours from an airport where big jets can land).
The mandatory first two years of on-campus housing is still more than double in cost what better accommodations would be off-campus.
Even though the exact same apartment I was in 30 years ago is now renting for 4X what I paid, despite what seems like a tremendous amount of building of new apartments in that time. Based on the reviews the apartment I lived in then is now a dump, it was average back then.
The enrollment at the university has increased by about 50%, but the number of restaurants, retail and service businesses in the area seem to have increased many-fold.
The university I went to had roughly the same number of college students as local residents (town had roughly 20,000 permanent residents, university averaged around 20,000 students per year). Off campus housing is always going to be affordable in a small college town like that. If you price your housing above what students can afford, no one is going to rent from you.
It’s a much different situation that say a college in Baltimore, where the majority of residents have nothing to do with the local colleges.
There are two problem today that are closely related – skyrocketing rents, and a shortage of rentals. I just recently heard on the news that students around here were having a hell of a time finding any living accommodations at all.
Back in my student days, much of my time was spent in off-campus student housing that consisted of a medium-sized apartment building that had been renovated and furnished by the enterprising university student council, and run as a non-profit. I don’t remember what it cost but I’m sure it was dirt-cheap.
To put things in perspective, a few years later a university colleague and I – both still young bachelors at the time – decided we’d share a place. After looking around at various places we didn’t like, we found a beautiful spacious almost-new 3-bedroom townhouse rental. We thought it was expensive but, meh, life is short, let’s go for it.
The rent when we moved in was $120 a month, and that included heat (gas furnace) but not electricity. That was back in circa 1975 or thereabouts, and my inflation calculator puts that at around $630 in today’s dollars – still dirt-cheap where today you’d expect to pay thousands. So yes, housing of all kinds, including off-campus student housing, has become ridiculously expensive in many areas. Couple that with astronomical tuition costs, and I pity today’s students.
Here’s a chart showing recent monthly increases in rent prices. As it turns out, rent accounts for roughly a third of CPI.
Our son just finished college in Ithaca, NY, and the rents there were pretty high. Students who wanted to live off campus were advised to start looking during fall semester the year before they moved. Our son and his girlfriend both stayed on campus; junior and senior years they lived in a campus apartment. IC has guaranteed housing for all 4 years; I’m glad he didn’t have to deal with getting a place off campus. A lot of colleges only guarantee on campus housing for the first year or two.
Even though I never lived off campus during my college years, my parents thought that it was more convenient (for me) to live on campus all 4 years, since I worked on campus at the time.
However, on campus meal plans are usually more expensive than buying your own food (if you stay on a budget while still eating healthy)
A lot of colleges (a majority of the “destination” ones that draw from beyond their commuting area?) REQUIRE on campus housing for the first year or two. My niece’s roommate lived 12 minutes from her dorm. Still had to stump up for a dorm room and a 15 meal minimum plan for two years.
One impact that rising rents and other costs can have on students is eligibility for need-based financial aid. Whether and how much aid a student is eligible for is calculated based on an estimated “cost of attendance” at the university, including tuition, room and board, transportation, etc. If estimates aren’t keeping up with actual increases in rent, gas prices, inflation, etc., financially needy students may not get enough assistance to be able to cover their expenses.
I’ve also noticed that some people (who live in off campus apartments) aren’t affiliated with the college located nearby, which makes me wonder if certain colleges have rules and regulations on who’s allowed to live in off campus apartments, even though they may or may not be cheaper than regular apartments located outside of college towns…
This is an obvious reason so many students are attending college virtually.
Or going to College closer to parents home.
How would that work? If what you mean by “off campus apartment” is just an apartment that happens to be located near a college campus (and not, say, student / faculty / staff housing owned by the college, which is a different thing that also exists in some places), there’s no reason to expect it to be occupied only by people affiliated with the college, nor is there any way for the college to regulate who gets to live there (other than having a regulation that says, for example, that all first-year students must live on campus, already mentioned in this thread).
FWIW, I work at a liberal arts college in a small town in the deep South, generally a low-rent part of the country. I checked the price at the apartment complex across the street from campus. $900 for a two-bedroom, which seems pretty affordable for a student splitting the costs with a roommate. A somewhat nicer-looking place between the campus and downtown, but still within walking distance, was asking $825-925 for a one-bedroom. I also found a listing for $495-795 for a two-bedroom, but it was in a neighborhood I’d consider dodgier (though still within walking distance).