Burlington renters hit revolving door - It’s rental roulette in tight housing market
By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer • May 31, 2009
Flotillas of sofas strapped atop hatchbacks offer clues. Still-to-be sorted piles of possessions on porches and lawns hint at the annual scramble in full swing.
The rental trucks are a dead giveaway.
Beginning this weekend, a hefty portion of Queen City residents submit to a frantic rental roulette.
Leases expire, new leases are signed; safety deposits are transferred to new landlords.
Thursday, Stuart Jackson, 20, a University of Vermont junior with a South Union Street address, accelerated the process. He went online and found a more desirable dwelling on Greene Street; “a more college-student environment,” he said.
Jackson said he was optimistic about his move to the northeast quadrant of downtown Burlington, a student-rich quarter termed, often affectionately, as a “ghetto.”
The neighborhood’s appeal to students are obvious: it’s within an easy walk to urban diversions as well as the campuses of the UVM, Champlain College, Community College of Vermont and Burlington College.
The young demographic gravitates to (and contributes to) the city’s lively, walkable center.
Friday, Jackson and his roommate, Henry Lindon, 22, hauled the last of their belongings into Lindon’s SUV. Jackson paused as he slid what he called an underused fishing rod at the cargo’s summit.
“We’ve got to be out of here by 8 o’clock Saturday morning,” he said, “And I can’t move into the new place until Monday.”
He’d already phoned around to ask about self-storage units. The nearest facility with a vacancy was Leo’s Self Storage, in Essex.
Living in limbo
Calls to self-storage facilities confirmed Jackson’s findings. Douglas Greig, manager of Burlington Self Storage (in South Burlington) said of 475 units, he had only two very large spaces available.
“If I had another 50 to 100 smaller units here, I could rent them right now,” he said.
Parents phone him as early as March to inquire about availability. He takes their numbers and calls back when space opens up. Some rent units year-round for their acquisitive offspring.
Michael O’Leary, who manages Easy Self Storage in South Burlington, said his facility was likewise “stuffed” with college students’ (and other renters’) belongings.
Parents are often too happy to foot the bill, he added.
“The majority of them don’t want to take their kids’ stuff home,” he said.
How low can we go?
Students provide Burlington with “a steady stream of demand,” said Mark Brooks, a real estate analyst and principle in South Burlington-based Allen & Brooks.
As the most conspicuous and seasonal of Burlington’s migrants, students have perennially triggered discussions over the availability of apartments, he said.
The urgency of those discussions often hinges on a few numbers, and Brooks supplied them on a single, simple chart: Compared with the national average of 10 percent for rental housing vacancies (and a 3.5 percent average for Vermont), Burlington residents contend with an average vacancy rate of about 1.5 percent.
Brooks said he had no simple explanation for the Queen City’s dubious distinction. But, he added, Vermont’s time-consuming permitting process for new construction probably results in proportionally larger logjams in the state’s biggest city.
By another standard, he continued, small is not beautiful: Large-scale developers haven’t rushed here to build apartments for the modest (by national standards) college-student population around Burlington.
Other recent anecdotal evidence points to “more price-sensitive” rental consumers, Brooks said, adding that the phenomenon might be “a hiccup” rather than a solid trend.
But, he added, the current financial downturn would certainly account for parents of college students hoping to trim housing allowances.
Civic duties
Most Burlington renters will remain in “a real crunch” until the University of Vermont and Champlain College provide more attractive on- or near-campus apartment housing, said the city’s Assistant Director for Housing & Neighborhood Revitalization, Brian Pine, this week.
Thursday, he summarized recent letters of understanding between the city and both institutions that formalize a strategy linking dorm room (or apartment) construction directly to enrollment growth.
Most dramatically, UVM agrees to increase its on-campus bed-count by about 160 by this fall; another 400 at the beginning of the 2011 academic year.
The agreement with Champlain College aims to slow — and reverse — the school’s sprawl into neighboring communities.
Pine said the memorandums might promote improved town-gown relations.
“In the 1990s, when UVM was in the midst of leadership transitions, housing was largely forgotten or opposed,” he said.
Past time
A 1998 real estate study, “The Impact of the University of Vermont on Housing in Burlington,” completed by Allen & Cable (now Allen & Brooks) for the city found “a direct relationship” between rental rates and student density.
“The current level of student demand serves to inflate rents and lower vacancies in the Burlington market,” the study states, adding that the city benefited, at least in part:
“In turn, the higher rents translate to higher property values, which serve to increase the City’s taxable grand list and property tax revenues,” it states.
Fifteen years earlier, a city study explored the nature of what seemed then — as now — to be an upward spiral in rents, where “student purchasing power” inflates the market.”
“Landlords tend to use what a student is willing to pay as a benchmark for setting higher appraisal values when rental real estate changes hands,” the 1983 document continues, “and rents must be raised to amortize those transactions.”
Some landlords, the study added, might find themselves with “little incentive to properly maintain their properties.”
Collegial approaches
Burlington’s “crunch” is not confined to the student district, Pine said; tenant families with children contribute their share to properties’ wear and tear.
Because building inspections are designed only to maintain minimum codes of health and safety in a structure, Burlington’s quality of life for renters ultimately depends on new construction, he added.
“Housing shortage results in lowered quality,” he continued. “As a renter, you’re going to take what you can get. A shortage of supply takes away all the bargaining power a renter might have. Market forces alone aren’t going to improve the condition of rental units. It’s a race to the bottom.”
Yet Pine said he was encouraged by a common sense of purpose by the city, UVM and Champlain.
“We’re all developing a more collegial approach these days. It’s really just a challenge now,” he said.
Tom Gustafson, UVM’s vice president for student and campus life, seconded that.
“We’d love to work with some private developers in order to migrate some of these students out of the Victorian houses,” he said.
“We’re making some progress. The problem is finding the resources and the room to do it,” he continued. “And the challenge, of course, is it has to be attractive to students.”
Stay or go?
On Friday, as Jackson and Lindon hauled their belongings to Essex, Spencer Richter, 22, cleaned out his remaining possessions from an adjacent apartment.
The rental truck parked outside was nearly full.
Richter, who graduated this year from Champlain College with a degree in hotel and restaurant management, said the vehicle allowed him to hedge bets between several housing options he’d entertained for the past month or so.
On Thursday afternoon, he’d settled on a four-way share of a house on Williams Street. The truck would serve as a mobile storage unit until Monday — the day he can move in.
Richter’s shuffle won’t end with his upcoming one-year lease. His job at Loretta’s Restaurant in Essex ends in late September, as will some catering work in Stowe.
He whistled his dog back inside and wondered aloud: How and when he might best sublet his new lodging to yet another transient tenant.