Student housing preleasing hits 89.1% as regional gaps widen

Student housing preleasing at the Yardi 200 schools hit 89.1 percent in July, 100 basis points above the final occupancy reading compiled in July 2025; the national figure looks like a healthy runway into the fall semester. The distribution beneath it is less reassuring.

Rent growth is running at 2 percent year over year, and the average advertised rent per bed has not moved since February. That flatness is the first sign the leasing season is close to fully priced: operators who did their leasing early took the rents on offer, and the late-summer market is now filling the remaining beds without pushing rates higher. The regional detail is wide, from Northeast rents up 3 percent year over year and Midwest rents up 2.5 percent to the West essentially flat at 0.1 percent.

Preleasing tells the same story: the Midwest leads at 90.9 percent, with Central Michigan University and the University of Missouri both above 99 percent, while the Southeast follows at 89.9 percent and the Northeast at 89.1 percent. The West is the only region trailing last year's pace, down 40 basis points to 87 percent, even though Boise State and the University of Arizona improved on their 2025 numbers.

Yardi Matrix attributes the divergence to two forces. New supply is concentrated in the largest markets, which weighs on schools with the biggest bed counts and drags the national metrics; the sector is also dealing with a reported sharp decline in international student enrollment, a hit concentrated in universities with large foreign-student populations.

Because the Yardi 200 is an index of the schools with the most beds, a supply glut in a handful of big markets moves the aggregate even when the typical regional campus is nearly full. That measurement effect is what the regional dispersion is showing.

For lenders and operators, the 200-school average is the wrong denominator. The national prelease rate is essentially a Midwest and Southeast story; the West is already rolling over, and the large-bed-count schools that dominate the index are exactly the ones carrying supply and international-enrollment risk. Underwrite the campus, not the index. A student housing loan priced off this summer's headline is missing the actual asset: a 99-percent-preleased Missouri project and a softening Western flagship are different businesses, and the capital markets should treat them that way.