Students renting in Westwood have it rough ““ rents are ridiculously high, with the cost of a shared room topping what many single rooms cost elsewhere, and such amenities as parking are scarce.
And a recent trend in Westwood seems to indicate that the problems students face renting will only get worse.
There is currently one condominium complex in Westwood and two more on the way. Club California opened last spring as Westwood’s first condo complex, converting 209 apartments into condominiums. Now, two more apartment buildings have announced plans to convert, and many more may be on the horizon.
In the most immediate sense, this means there are three less apartment complexes in Westwood.
But in the long run, if this trend continues, many more apartments could be closed in favor of the more profitable condominiums, driving more students out of apartments and increasing competition for those apartments that are left.
Club California has tried to spin this trend as a great new opportunity for students.
“There’s no point in throwing the rent money out the window when you can purchase,” Shannon Bedore, a sales agent for the complex, told the Daily Bruin in February.
But the purchase price for these condos is very high ““ much more than most students can afford. The smallest units start above $300,000 and larger units reach into the $700,000 range.
The vast majority of students don’t have the money or the credit to buy condos at these prices.
One of the proposed benefits of condominiums is that parents can purchase a place for their children to live while at school, then sell the place when their child leaves. If parents buy the condo, they avoid paying the hefty rents in the area and can even turn a profit when property values are on the rise.
Sounds like a good plan, but how many parents can afford to spend more than $300,000 on a one-room studio in a college town?
And of those who can afford to buy a condo, how many want to spend that amount of money for college kids, who aren’t exactly known for how nicely they treat their residences.
Only about 10 percent Club California residents are undergraduates, Bedore said. The low number should be an indication that the condo option is not one that most students are pleased with.
As more apartment complexes convert to condos, there will be more competition for the remaining apartments. That means rent in these buildings will go up and more students will be forced out of the Westwood market.
But as it is, there are too many people who want to live in Westwood and too few places that can accommodate them, so the conversion of even more of these complexes into expensive condos will only make the situation worse.
Or students can start finding places farther away from campus, such as south of Wilshire Boulevard or in other nearby communities. But this can disconnect students from the campus community, and almost none of them will get parking on campus.
Students also have the option of staying in on-campus housing. But this doesn’t offer the opportunities and experiences that many students thrive on during their years in college.