During the RE boom, it became fairly normal to send your kid to even a crap school like USF Tampa and buy a house or condo for her. You buy the house, she has cheap place to live and gets two roommates. You get most of your money out of the rent from the roommates, the rest you don't get back you would have spent on the kid's living expenses anyway (probably getting much more for less than had you put her up in dorm housing). At the end of 4-5 years, you sell for a bunch more money at inflated RE prices during the boom. If they were buying condos which, in urban areas, tend to come with gyms, pools, theatres, entertainment complexes, clubs, etc., then people's expectations of what the "college experience" could be moved far beyond concrete block dormitories awhile ago, and for the "average" student - not just for the well-to-do.
Around here, this remains totally normal for doctors in training at EVMS. They buy a house or condo, get roommates, sell when they're done with school. Demand has usually stayed up due to continual raft of med students + military. Now that it's harder to do this and expect a return, I can see how people are expecting lifestyle to match up to what their predecessors had, especially if their parents had bought some condo replete with condo community, gym, tennis, pool, etc.
> Pools, weight rooms, hi def TV, granite countertops....
>
> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-luxury-student-housing-20110904,0,737126.story
>
> Joanna
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