Cal Poly students who choose to live off campus come fall may see the benefits of a competitive rental market in the wake of the recent housing slump and an increase in capacity at Poly Canyon Village.
Poly Canyon Village’s current capacity is 1,531, which includes staff housing. That capacity will expand to 2,664 and the complex has already received 2,991 applications as of last Friday, according to Preston Allen, executive director of University Housing.
Unlike this year, where the PCV housing option was offered only to sophomores, Allen said that the application process will now be opened up to off-campus students as well.
“It will be interesting to see if there’s any interest from the students who are already off campus to want to come back on campus and live in Poly Canyon Village,” he said.
Amenities such as high speed Internet, cable television, phone lines, as well as a custodial staff to clean common areas are all included in PCV’s monthly rate of about $700 per month.
Compare that figure to the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce’s 2009 Economic Profile for the city of San Luis Obispo that reported that rental rates in the county have gone up 11.4 percent and that a one- or two-bedroom off-campus rental averages $896 and $1,128, respectively. Most also require a security deposit and do not include all utilities.
Monica Guevara, an office administrator for McNamara Real Estate in San Luis Obispo said that her company hasn’t seen a significant rise in the rental rates for the properties that it manages.
“For the most part, across the board, we really haven’t been raising a lot of rents,” she said.
The company, which manages more than 400 properties in San Luis Obispo County and has about an 80 percent student client base, has had to adjust to the housing slump, but has been fortunate to have avoided any foreclosure issues so far, something that Guevara said may have plagued other companies.
The combination of the housing downturn – an anticipated 6.1 percent decline in home prices and a 10.4 percent decrease in sales according the Chamber of Commerce’s report – and the presence of Poly Canyon Village has put renters in a position to be choosy in demanding lower rental prices and better amenities
“It has had an affect on our rentals,” Guevara said. “We definitely try to prepare for additional rentals being on the market due to Poly Canyon. It adds competitiveness so in order to combat a lot of the owners of the properties we manage have been doing a lot of upgrades just to try to keep up with how competitive the market will be.”
McNamara has taken several steps to remain competitive, including encouraging property owners to upgrade appliances, replace carpets and tile and continually evaluating the properties to ensure that they’re appealing to renters.
Allen, who shares university housing information with the off-campus community, said that renters who aren’t keeping up with the upgrades would be the one’s who suffer in the current economy.
“If they are a good, solid complex and are respecting the information that’s being presented to them as an opportunity to take some action and make some changes in their housing program, they should be fine,” he said.
“It’s those who offer substandard housing – (who) haven’t changed the carpet in their apartment in the last 10-15 years, (who) haven’t painted in the past 10-15 years, and really take the student community for granted – those are the ones that are really going to feel the effects of the marketplace.”
On the home sales side of the picture, the sharp decline in home prices means it’s a buyer’s market, although many sellers are reluctant to let their homes go at such low prices, according to Keith Byrd, a local Century 21 realtor.
“There’s not a lot of motivated sellers right now,” he said.
Byrd, who has experience helping parents of Cal Poly students to purchase homes in the area, said that there’s not a lot of inventory in the campus area that is on the market. He said that people in the area have approached him to sell their home but after a price evaluation, they decide to hold onto the property and to keep renting it out.
“Majority of them are saying ‘we’re going to wait,” he said.