(02-06-2017, 03:37 PM)timc Wrote: Something doesn't seem right about that math. If you have 5000 extra student apartment beds, that doesn't necessarily mean that you will have 1000 more single family homes available. Won't you also end up with a bunch of student apartments that are unrentable because there simply aren't enough students to fill them? Are we approaching the point where there are literally more apartments than there are renters to fill them? Isn't it possible to have a glut of a specific type of apartment while experiencing a shortage of another?
I think most students prefer the northdale high rises, and they appear to have no issues with being rented. This certainly appears to be true among friends that are still in that rental market, with many telling me they pay $650-700/month for one bedroom with roommates in the towers near the university. Very few students seem to actually prefer living in houses in lakeshore, beechwood, etc.
So, it's true that if enough students preferred houses over the towers then we could see empty towers and no new availability of houses, but I don't think this is actually the case. Friends that rent houses in those neighbourhoods only do so because they're cheap, and not because they prefer it. I think we'll see more tower construction reduce prices for towers as supply catches up with demand for close to campus living, and houses converting back to owner occupied as they become more profitable to sell than to rent to students.
I'm also not sure I buy the argument in the article that demographic trends means there will be declining enrolment. That might be true on average, but I expect its effects will be felt unequally by universities. UW already has enough programs that have 95%+ high school average cutoffs because demand far exceeds available spaces (this includes programs that take hundreds of students each year). I predict UW's prestige will keep it at least as full as it is today, with a slight decline in marks required.