Boise State Suddenly a Student Housing Mecca

Carter’s wrapping up development of The Vista, a 236-unit community serving Boise State. It’s competing with two other developers, Carter SVP of development David Nelson tells us, something that’s bound to happen when everyone recognizes a great opportunity. The huge boom of student housing development glutted the markets of most major universities (especially in the Southeast), so Carter’s looking for universities that are growing (sometimes smaller universities that haven’t garnered much interest before) but that haven’t gotten much purpose-built student housing development. David’s seeing the best opportunities in the Midwest and Northwest in schools like BYU, Provo, Oregon and Washington.

Boise State is a perfect example: Enrollment topped 20,000 students for the first time ever in 2012 and has continued to grow, but it hadn’t gotten a new student housing community in almost 15 years. That led to the sudden rush of groundbreakings and comes with another challenge, David says—a learning curve for the market and for leasing agents. Carter flew leasing agents from The Vista to Austin to tour student housing communities and truly understand what product they’d be leasing. It’s a much higher quality that just doesn’t translate onto paper, David says—today’s purpose-built student housing is nothing like on-campus dorms, older student housing, or single-family homes that Boise State students have been living in. Carter doesn’t plan to break ground on any properties this year, but it’s continuing to target student housing development, David tells us.