College Towns Good For Real Estate Investing?

Interesting article from ABC money news that you can take a look at here.

States that university towns are not facing the "squeeze" the recession.

Here's their stats:

• Provo, Utah, where the university is located, has added jobs to its economy. Over the last year, there's been a 2.97 percent rise in jobs in Provo; the national unemployment rate has now hit 8.9 percent.
• There are also business booms in college towns like College Station, Texas (home to Texas A&M and up 2.06 percent); Baton Rouge, La. (up 2.16 percent), which Louisiana State calls home; and Durham, N.C. (up 2.49 percent), where Duke University have been major drivers of economic activity.

Why?

Research universities tend to be great environments for business, as they're flush with cheap, highly talented labor (recent grads), and the massive research and development budgets universities have. Plenty of the world's top companies, including Dell, Cisco Systems and Google, began in university settings.

So how does this effect the real estate market?

It appears buying in college towns is a good hedge against steep downturns during a recession. Going to Zillow (why can't we have this site in Canada) we can take a look:



The Zindex for Provo shows that prices have fallen 8.8% from last year and about 15% off the peak. In comparison, according the same ZINDEX, America has a whole has fallen 14.2% and 21.8% from the peak.

One of the key things we look at is our real estate is close to a university.