Blackstone Bet $13 Billion On The Impending Student Housing Price Surge. These Investors Are Doing The Same With $500

Student housing spikes in value in times of recession as fewer families can afford to rent whole units for their students. The recent economic turmoil is no different. 

Student housing rent rose by 4.7% in 2022, and a similar trend is happening with preleasing for the fall of 2023. Blackstone Inc., a nearly $1 trillion investment corporation with hundreds of analysts at hand, realized what was happening and got in on the action. It quickly acquired American Campus Communities, the largest student housing company in the U.S., for $13 billion. 

But you don’t need to be a financial institution behemoth to profit from the looming surge in dorm rent. Thanks to the revolution kickstarted by Collab, you can carve out your piece of this booming market with only $500.

Qian Wang is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT alumnus who acquired and managed over $3.2 billion of real estate assets through his joint venture. One day he had an idea. He correctly assumed that inflation and less accessibility to loans are going to drive the prices of student housing up. But retail investors would be left behind once again. He decided to change that and in 2020, created Collab, an option for retail investors to capitalize on this niche through partial ownership.

A few years down the line and even Collab’s tenants are flocking to invest in the company’s offerings. They can see the revolutionary ways the company is cutting costs while maintaining a high-quality standard for its units, and they want in.

Here’s one example: With Collab, student tenants are the ones who show the rooms to interested new students instead of expensive leasing agents. Potential new tenants can hear first-hand accounts about what it’s like on the premises while the tenant earns income, and Collab and its investors save a lot.

But what does Collab look like from the vantage point of inventors?

Investors can acquire shares of individual properties located near the nation’s top colleges like the University of California, Berkeley. By doing so, they are listed as partial property owners and receive monthly rent dividends proportionate to their stake. Investments start at $500, and any U.S. citizen older than 18 is eligible to be a fractional owner. Collab’s offering are qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through Regulation A+.

1742 Spruce is a $7.5 million property one block from UC Berkeley that’s available on Collab. (Image courtesy of Collab)

Collab provides an opportunity for those who want to capitalize on broader market trends. One efficient way to anticipate movements in the student housing market is to look at preleases for the next school year. In December, they reached an all-time high for the period, with Yardi 200 universities recording a 48% prelease rate for fall 2023. Additionally, sales volume for student housing in 2022 almost doubled that of 2021.

With the new school year around the corner, a huge percentage of students will be looking for a bed instead of the entire place because of high rental prices. Consequently, the cost of student housing is set to soar. Collab is your way to invest in promising student housing beforehand.

Click here to invest with Collab.