Question for Student Housing Managers... Who's Paying the Rent?

With some of my coworkers at the NAA Student Housing conference this week, I thought it would be a good time to ask a question regarding student housing that I've been wondering about for a while.

Student housing is certainly a unique segment of the industry, which seems to operate differently in a number of ways...
My question to student housing Property Managers is:
On average what percentage of residents have parents that take care of the monthly rent payment for them, and what percentage of student residents physically pay the rent themselves (write a check or pay online, etc... whether the rent money is funded by parents or not)?

When I was in school, I was lucky enough to have parents pay my apartment rent each month, so I never thought much about it. Is this generally the case? Or do most student residents take care of the payments themselves? Whats most common at your communities?


Also -
If parents are paying, how do u communicate rental dates, payment options, amounts/fees, etc... with them since they don't live on-site?

Since we have mostly graduate students about 95% of them pay their rent on their own usually through student loan money. Most of these students take out the maximum allowed and then pay 6 months in advance. I do have some parents that do send in a check from time to time but usually it's the students that pay. I cannot tell you how many of them actually receive the money from mom or dad and then pay which could be some.

Hope this helps.

We rent to undergraduate students and most of them pay the rent with their student loans and scholarships. There are a small percentage whose parents pay their rent and even fewer who pay themselves. All but a few pay online.

Hello Elizabeth,
I do not manage a student housing property but our company, Occupancy Heroes Incorporated, has leased up and serviced a few of them around the globe. I would say that about five years ago we saw more of the parents paying the rent. Now that trend has switched drastically. Most of the students that we have worked with lately have been responsible for their own rent. They pay it mostly through student loans. I think that we really saw the change when the economy stated to go south a while back. However, I have to say that our clients in New York do still have a lot of the parent paying the rent for the overseas students.

As for the communication, we made certain that we received all contact information including email for collection purposes. The leaseholders would sign a form allowing us to communicate with their parents as well. So, when communication went out all parties would receive it.

I hope that this information is helpful. Best of luck to you and your property!

www.occupancyheroes.com