Collegiate Times

Hard times may have hit the American housing market, but Blacksburg seems to be bucking the trend.

Jeremy Hart, a realtor for NRVLiving Real Estate Group at Coldwell Banker Townside, said Blacksburg and similar college communities display safe real estate markets for investors and renters.

"It has been proven to be very strong, with very little dips and very few spikes. It's been a pretty steady increase," in price, Hart said.

Hart said the market is not "recession-proof," but derives strength from the stability of the education market.

"Other towns rely on a variety of industries that ebb and flow," Hart said. "They change on the strength of the industry provided for. Projection numbers for the college community rise all the time. The ability of the education market is that it doesn't ebb and flow, like say, the auto industry."

Ted Koebel, of the Virginia Center for Housing Research, said Blacksburg is not necessarily a rising market, but it offers stability.

"You're protected in that you're not going to have the kind of losses as you would in other markets," Koebel said. "The market is dependant on demand that is not as influenced by shifts in the private market. It is less volatile. This is a very specialized market."

For students, however, it means no relief on rent prices.

"I would be surprised by a drastic or noticeable reduction in rent because of the strength in the university market," Hart said.

Koebel said the economy would indicate a rise in rent prices in many cases, but not in Blacksburg.

"Oddly, with the downturn in the single-family home ownership market, the expectation would be for families to go to the rental market, and that would start pushing rents up, but I'm not sure how likely that is to happen," Koebel said.

Dara Shen, manager of the Off Campus Housing office, agreed that rent prices would not be decreasing in the foreseeable future.

"Right now, it's either going to stay the same or go up, just because the demand is not the same, it's higher," Shen said.

This is largely due to the rising enrollment of Virginia Tech. Blacksburg is the only locality in the New River Valley that saw the 2008 average sales price of housing increase from 2007.  

Demand for off campus housing, according to Shen, is being driven up by several factors.

"The freshman class is a lot bigger this year so with the growing demand and the economy being bad, the rental rates are going up," Shen said. "There has also been a trend, because the economy is bad, of people graduating and not leaving town, and that's created less vacancies."

Shen said another effect of rising demand is pressure from landlords to decide on future residence.

"Students are being pressured to sign leases earlier on," Shen said. "If their leases start in August then they are being asked to renew in November. You've only been living there two or three months, and they want to know if you're going to live there in 2009."

However, Shen said this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"A lot of times when you renew, they'll offer you a discounted rate, as opposed to what they would have given you," Shen said. "If you renew, your rent might go up $20, but for someone else renting the place when you left, it might go up $30 or $40. You could save money that way."

Koebel said the upcoming student housing search would be relatively similar to those of the past.