Camille’s Blog of the Week 2/25/16
Camille’s Blog of the Week
Parents Head to College Towns to Buy Real Estate
This is a great article that highlights other possibilities in the Resort and Second Home market that may be untapped at this time. It’s not just about beaches and snow! Enjoy!
by: Lara Hertel of Reuters
TORONTO — San Fransisco Bay-area couple Kate and Dale never expected to be landlords. But that’s exactly what happened when they decided to buy a three-bedroom townhouse for their daughter in her sophomore year at University of Washington in Seattle.
“Some of the campus housing we saw was horrible, and it was expensive, too,” says Kate. “We decided we could create a safe, good quality home for her and we thought it would be a good investment on top of it.”
Kate and Dale represent a new trend in the already-popular college town real estate market: they’re called “parent investors,” a savvy group of homebuyers who are opting to purchase a house in their kids’ college town instead of spending money on rent or dorm fees. A new survey from Coldwell Banker found that 64 percent of its real estate agents are seeing a “significant number” of parents investing in homes for their kids to live in while attending university.
“Interest in college towns is always going to be high, especially for people who once went to school there — and people are seeing value in this investment,” says Jim Gillespie, CEO of Coldwell Banker.
The lure of college real estate appears to be recession-proof. Seventy-three percent of those surveyed said they see a significant number of investors buying homes near campus and renting them out despite the economic downturn, with only 21 percent seeing a decrease in this trend over the past five years.