The Pros and Cons of Renting Your Properties To Students – And How You Can Overcome the Cons

Are you thinking about renting your investment property (whether that be a house, unit or apartment) to students?

This is definitely a worthwhile idea since the demand for student apartments is extremely high, but you should also be aware of the fact that having students as tenants is quite different than having families, seniors or young couples as tenants.

We have examined some of the pros and cons of renting your properties to students and how to overcome the cons.

PROS

High Demand: Landlords have to be aware of the fact that the demand for student apartments is extremely high.

More and more students decide to move away from home and study either in another city or abroad and all of those students need a place to stay.

This means that landlords have a lot of applicants to choose from when searching for a new tenant and can be quite “picky” about who they will choose.

Focusing on renting your property to students might therefore be a really good decision if you want to find someone fast and hence limit vacancy risk.

Less Picky Tenants: Students are usually not that picky when it comes to choosing a place to live.

Usually they are mainly interested in the location and the price and do not really care about the floorplan rather than decor.

This means that your tenant may be more forgiving if property is somehow cosmetically challenged, or not considered trendy by today’s standards.

Easier To Keep Happy: Having students as tenants may equate to less complaints. Of course, you will need to follow the laws and regulations concerning tenants, but our experience is that students tend to complain a lot less than some other tenant types.

Examples include students being less precious about noise, agreeable to smaller private open spaces as they are less maintenance, are not put off by smaller bedrooms or smaller living areas.

Get Your Rent In Advance: Subject to tenancy laws allowing it, students with parents supporting them are sometimes able to pay their entire rent up front.

This is of course an advantage for the landlord as they do not have to worry about whether or not they will receive the rent and can also pay the mortgage or any other costs easier and faster.

Longer Term Rentals: It’s a mistake to think all students will be short-term tenants. Experience shows that some students will rent the same dwelling for the entire duration of their course – up to 3 or 4 years!

This means that as a landlord you will not have to deal with finding new tenants every couple of months which will save you a lot of time and energy.

CONS

Seasonality: It can be quite challenging to find student tenants for the summer months as this is normally the time when students have a break at the University and usually go either back home or go on holidays.

In some cases, such as participating in a study exchange programmes, students will also search for space to lease for only one semester as they will afterwards move back to their home country.

This can be a disadvantage for the landlord as he or she might have to deal with an empty apartment during summer months.

Student Lifestyle: Students definitely have a different lifestyle than young professionals or families with children. This lifestyle has to be considered when renting to student tenants.

Although there are students that will be studying most of the time and you will not even know they are there, many students also want to make the most out of their tertiary schooling experience which means there may be some partying and some noise complains from unhappy neighbours.

Possible Damages: Since students are young they are still developing an adult sense of responsibility.

This means that they might not treat the furniture and appliances in the property as carefully as other older and more mature tenants might. Possible damages or breakdowns of appliances might therefore occur more often in student apartments.

How To Overcome The Cons?

Having names to possible risks, the way to mitigate them is diligent pre-screening, and proper documentation of the tenant’s rights and responsibilities.

As a landlord you should make sure to include all the necessary clauses in your lease agreement, and you should receive always ask for a security deposit (aka rental bond).

Of course, diligent management to police and enforce the lease agreement is essential to ensure everything is going to plan.

A lot of times it also turned out that the prejudices people have about student tenants are not true and that in reality students make great tenants.

This is a guest post contributed by HousingAnywhere.com.

If you’re interested in renting your investment property to international students and young professionals then check out online housing platform: HousingAnywhere.com.

This website helps match landlords to students, and to make the whole process from posting to renting out your investment property easy and safe.

By Guest Post

This is a guest post.