Investment by degrees: the growing market for university pads
Tiger parents, whose fierce encouragement of their children’s educational endeavour aims to equip them for the jungle of professional life, need few excuses to intervene in the lives of their young protégés. But increasingly, the chances of investment gains and an additional bolt-hole in a plush US or UK city is providing them with another reason to get their claws out.
US agents report a flurry of apartment-buying by parents looking to accommodate their children through university degrees in New York and Los Angeles, with an eye on foreign visits and a future buy-to-let investment.
The two cities house four of the six most popular US universities for foreign students, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE), a non-profit organisation. New York University (NYU) and Columbia — respectively first and fourth most popular — are a special target for Asian buyers, says Amy Williamson, of Knight Frank’s US residential business.
In the US, international students comprise 4 per cent of the total student population. At the last count, for the academic year 2013-2014, there were 886,000, an increase of more than 8 per cent on the year before. The vast majority are long-term visitors, studying towards an undergraduate or graduate degree, says the IIE’s Sharon Witherell.
Half of the US’s foreign students are from China, India and South Korea; with a quarter of a million from China alone.
A client from Taipei wanted Knight Frank’s Williamson to find a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. The couple have a child at Princeton (just over an hour from Manhattan by car) and a second applying to NYU. “The parents are looking for a base to visit, somewhere with investment potential, where the second child can live if he gets into NYU,” says Williamson.
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