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Let Student Housing Pay For Itself for your OSU Cascades Students

Last Updated June 15, 2022

Student housing is expensive.

Okay, so in Bend, housing is pretty expensive in general, whether you’re a student or not. The reasons why people are moving to Bend in droves, students included, are pretty easy to see.

But student housing at OSU Cascades comes with a particularly hefty price tag.

For the 2018-19 school year, students can expect to pay $1,113 per month per person for a shared double with a private bathroom. This rate does include dining room fees.

Dorm life might make sense during freshman year, when it provides students with opportunities to make friends, experience what the “college life” is all about, and roll out of bed, put on clean clothes, and be seated and ready for morning classes in minutes flat.

The luster may fade, though, and by sophomore year, students may be eyeing off-campus housing and anticipating the joys of not sharing a tiny room with another person.

Maybe the student in your family doesn’t even want to be in that position in the first place. Let’s face it: with the recent proliferation of online social networks, the dorm is no longer the social epicenter it once was.

With web services like meetup.com, students can easily find people nearby who share their interests, and this is just one example of the many options for forming connections with others.

So: off-campus housing. Apartments are a popular choice, and rates for a 2-bedroom apartment are much lower than for a dorm room, ranging between $800 and $1200 or higher per month in Bend. Divided between two people, that may not be so bad.

Southern Crossing, the home of OSU Cascades is, of course, one of Bend’s more desirable neighborhoods. That means it’s also one of Bend’s more expensive, so expect rates on the upper end of that spectrum.

A two-bedroom house will cost between $1400 and $1800 or more per month in rent. Again, if being within walking or biking distance of campus is a priority, definitely expect to land on the upper end of the scale.

Let Student Housing Pay for Itself

It’s easy to chalk up student housing as just an unavoidable expense, like tuition and textbooks, another cost to be paid in ushering your kids into adulthood. But what if there was another way? What if student housing, rather than draining money from your pocket, actually put money into it?

No, this isn’t a hypothetical parallel universe we’re talking about. Nor are we talking about housing students in some laboratory where they’re provided with room, board, and stipend in exchange for their participation in horrific experiments.

What we’re talking about is investment. Bend has a hot housing market. And if current market trends hold, the housing market around OSU Cascades is likely only to get hotter as the school grows in size and clout. So, even if students haven’t graduated from high school yet, now is the time to start looking for investment properties.

Needless to say, purchasing a property near campus will take care of student housing. Depending in part on the size of the house, you may lose some money in the short term, even if you’re renting out the other rooms to other students.

However, after four years–again, assuming current market trends continue–there’s a significant chance that the property will be worth a fair bit more than what you paid for it, and command higher rental rates.

Purchasing, renting, and selling a home does, of course, come with its own headaches. It may take a fair amount of time and expense before your home is ready to be a rental, and tenants can be hard on homes.  However, there are many upsides as well.

Our team at LOHR Real Estate is up to the task of helping you identify the property that is best poised to give you a return on your investment. We’ve been servicing the Bend area for more than 10 years and know the market top to bottom. Contact our Bend office, and we’ll get you started today. Or, look at Bend homes for sale in the Southern Crossing and Century West neighborhoods on our website.

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