Five States Account for Bulk of Student Housing Development

Student housing development has been heavily concentrated in a handful of states throughout the past decade. Just five states made up about 40% of the nation’s total new supply between 2010 and 2020. In order, those states were Texas (75,100 beds, or 15.4% of the U.S. total), Florida (41,600 beds, or 8.5%), California (26,200 beds, or 5.4%), Georgia (25,100 beds, or 5.1%) and North Carolina (24,800 beds, or 5.1%). Altogether, those five states comprise exactly one-third of the nation’s post-secondary enrollment. In absolute terms, that accounts for some 6.5 million of the nation’s 19.8 million post-secondary students. Remarkably, it takes the next 15 states to match development totals from Texas, Florida, California, Georgia and North Carolina. Among these next 15 states, the largest volumes were in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Arizona, which account for roughly 17,000 beds apiece (totaling a little more than 10% of the US total among the three states). There are a few states with sizeable post-secondary enrollment counts but limited new student housing supply. Included in those states are New York (3rd largest post-secondary enrollment count in the nation), Massachusetts (13th largest enrollment) and New Jersey (14th largest enrollment). Fewer than 14,000 new beds (or 3% of the national total) have delivered between those three states despite accounting for 11% of the nation’s post-secondary enrollment. Limited supply within those states points to local development cost pressure.