Campus Equity ← Zane Roberge
Milestone Home Lending · College Housing

Campus Equity

Four years of student rent buys a landlord a house. The same money could buy you one.

Parents spend a fortune on premium student housing near campus and keep none of it. Pooled toward a home they own together, that same money builds equity. Here is a typical four-family example.

$216,000
spent renting over 3 years, four families
$0
of it they keep
~$102,000
equity if they owned it together instead
$586 vs $1,500
cost per bed, owning vs renting
Run your own numbers
The idea

One student is one conversation. Four is a house.

Students rarely live alone, and rarely with random people. Off-campus housing is a coordinated decision, usually about four families sorting it out together. The nicer student apartments run $1,300 to $2,000 per bed, on 12-month leases, for about eight months of actual use.

Put four of those budgets in one place and it stops sounding like rent. It starts sounding like the purchase price of a house near campus. And a big chunk of it is paid for months the room sits empty, the summers home and the semester abroad. Owning that house instead turns the same spend into equity the families keep and split at graduation.

The calculator

Run it for your own scenario.

The rent you pay no matter what

Premium student apartments near campus, on 12-month leases. This is what you spend on housing every year your student is in school. None of it comes back, so it is the number that owning has to beat.
Rent for one bed in a premium student apartment near campus.
Bedrooms in the home, one per student.
Months the student lives there. Rent is still owed for empty months like summer.

The home you could buy instead

A single home near campus, bought instead of rented. The same monthly money now goes toward a house you own, building equity you keep rather than rent that disappears.
What the home costs to buy.
Cash paid up front, as a percent of the price.
The mortgage interest rate.
How much the home's value rises each year.
How long the family keeps the home.

The real costs, and the plan at graduation

The details a serious buyer asks about. Upkeep, property taxes, and income from renting rooms, plus what happens when your student graduates: hold the home, sell it, or rent it out.
Yearly upkeep, as a percent of value. About 1 percent is typical.
Rent from students in the spare rooms while your child is in school. Lowers the monthly cost. Renting it out fully after graduation is the option below.
Exit strategy.
Commission and closing costs to sell, as a percent of value. Only if you sell.

Hover or tap any number for the math behind it.
Rent paid
For empty months
summers home + a semester abroad
Equity if they hold

Equity rises. Rent sinks.

Equity built — kept, above the lineRent paid — gone, below the line
Cost per bed · renting
per month, money gone
Cost per bed · owning
per month, building equity
Want the one-pager?
The full breakdown, the lending terms in plain English, and how to think about owning it together, as a printable guide.
Download the guide (PDF) →