A face lift for North Broad St

Quite literally.

A lot of people don’t know this (including many Philadelphians), but Temple University is now home to over 35,000 students; that’s a big number for a dense, urban campus. Now, not all of those students are undergraduates, but 35,000 is an impressive number nonetheless. For comparison’s sake, UPenn has close to 25,000 students and Drexel also has close to 25,000 students.

So, if University City has over 50,000 students (with just Penn and Drexel alone), what’s next for the neighborhood in-around Temple’s campus? My professional opinion is that TU will soon become a Philadelphia “mini-hub” (just like Center City, University City, and the Navy Yard have). It’s only 2 miles from City Hall, it has a huge educational/medical/legal presence, and most of the campus has frontage on Broad St; all good things.

As a Philadelphia based real estate agent, my job is to know the local market and educate my clients on what is happening in/around the city. In Philadelphia, colleges play a large role in the city’s economic vitality. From student rentals to financial opportunities for real estate investors, Philadelphia’s colleges have a large daily impact on the entire Philadelphia MSA.

The reason I am blogging about this is because recent private/public development shows that the area in/around Temple is definitely on the rise.

Since I was an undergraduate student at La Salle from 1997-2001, I like to compare how things are today to how they were when I was in college. And in my days as a student, Temple was more well known for commuting than living on/around campus. Reason being, TU only has enough on-campus housing for 5,000-7,500 students (the last I heard; so don’t quote me on that, as the most recent figure was hard to locate), and you can’t live on-campus as a Junior or Senior.

This creates a huge off-campus housing opportunity for Temple’s 35,000+ undergraduate/graduate students.

All told, I think there are currently 12,000-15,000 TU students living on/around campus (again, don’t quote me on that as the numbers seemed to vary from source to source). In the grand scheme of things, that’s a pretty small number for a school of 35,000+. Which means there is more room for growth.

This is a big reason why the Temple University area is doing so well from a real estate perspective. Demand is high, and supply is low. It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that TU students created a strong, visible demand to live off/around campus; close enough to walk. Thus, real estate values have skyrocketed around TU in recent years (even during the downturn), and the boundaries for TU’s off-campus student area are expanding every year.

As you can also see from Temple’s 20/20 Plan, there is even more in store for their main campus in the years ahead.

Read the article about Morgan Hall, and learn how this university backed development project has changed the face of Temple forever.