AXIOStudent Delivers a Gold Mine of Data for Student Housing Operators

A business that until recently has been driven by limited information and gut feel is rapidly giving way to deep, hard data.

The extensive data AXIOStudent is now pumping out about student housing in markets nationwide is being pounced on by owners, investors, developers, lenders, operators and vendors in the student space, which has become a burgeoning asset class due at least partly to this new transparency. AXIOStudent replaces time-consuming data gathering and guesswork with a goldmine of eye-opening data and projections for profitable decision making.

How student is different

There’s been no lack of research and analysis available to rental property investors in recent years. The trouble is, student housing is in many ways a different animal from the rest of the market. Among the obvious differences: renters come from a very distinct slice of the local population. They move in and out according to regular (academic) schedules. They often rent beds, not units. Their populations are associated with specific local institutions (universities). And so on.

A couple of companies offering research on conventional properties have moved into the student space, but their products retain a data collection structure appropriate for conventional properties; they simply have a student veneer applied. Their research is drawn from far fewer universities than AXIOStudent, and their historical data (important for trend analysis) is very limited.

The reason AXIOStudent is getting so much attention is that it was built from the ground up for the student space.

An entire research staff spends 100% of their time collecting information specific to this sector – from market data, student properties themselves and over 350 universities (far more than anyone else). Even conventional properties that compete for students are included in the mix, with units converted to beds.

The property data extends from market-wide down to the floor plan level. It can include amenities, concessions, and whether units are all-bills-paid or rented furnished. And unlike with other data services, AXIOStudent data goes back as much as 6 years.

This new depth of information is boosting the confidence of investors and others in their decision making, and just as important, allowing them to look at many more deals since they’re no longer investing so much time gathering information on them. And the more projects they’re able to consider, the more selective they can be. Owners of existing student properties are also taking advantage of the data in judging whether the performance of their investments is where it should be.

A powerful new lens

There’s no limit to what you can do with the data AXIOStudent is now making available. Here are some of the more important ones:

• View supply and demand trends based on enrollment, population, acceptance rates and graduation data
• Determine optimal location, floor plan details, amenities and pricing for new student housing development and acquisition
• Gauge performance and impact of market changes based on distance from the university
• View student housing rankings by rent, occupancy, revenue growth, supply and many other categories
• Analyze student housing supply and demand per university, both university-owned and privately-owned
• Determine areas of opportunity by assessing top and bottom performing universities and properties
• Visualize the future with five-year forecasts for supply, rent growth, occupancy and more at 175 universities nationwide
• Identify and review history of prelease, occupancy, rents, rent growth, concessions and other information by property
• Monitor student housing market trends and property performance against comps in the market with Competitive Pricing Surveys (CPS)
• Understand a property’s risk to oversupply by identifying when new supply comes into the market
• Analyze a REIT’s investment diversification by university
• Discover true property ownership information, potentially different from the public record
• View last reported sales, with pricing and dates, in markets and submarkets
• Compare portfolio performance against others

Where AXIOStudent is enabling market mastery, Business Intelligence (BI) is giving student property managers an equally powerful lens into their own businesses, consolidating all internal company data at the property, regional and portfolio levels and allowing them to slice, dice and view it any way they want to.

Together, AXIOStudent and BI allow current and prospective players in student housing to arm themselves with incomparable tools for winning in the student space. Learn more!