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Student Housing Leasing Works Better as One Inventory

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By Richard Joseph Spinelli, Sandhills Real Estate A group of five stood on the sidewalk on Lorillard Place in March asking about an apartment that had been signed two days earlier. My name is Richard Joseph Spinelli, and I cofounded Sandhills Real Estate in 2020, a student housing owner and operator that buys, renovates and manages off campus housing around Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. Three doors down there was another unit that fit them, and the conversation moved there without anybody getting into a car. That short walk is the whole argument of this piece. It is written for operators running a handful of buildings in a college market who are deciding whether to spread out or press in. Concentration Turns Separate Buildings Into One Leasing Inventory Sandhills has 13 assets and 27 units housing more than 100 students, and they sit on and around Belmont Avenue, Lorillard Place and Bathgate Avenue in Belmont. On a spreadsheet those are 13 buildings with ...
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Student Housing Repairs Need a Small Bench of Trades

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By Richard Joseph Spinelli, Sandhills Real Estate Photo by Josh Lemmon on Unsplash A plumber walked into a fourth basement on the same block last winter and knew, before anyone said anything, which of the two shutoffs on the wall was the one that actually worked. He had been in the three houses before it. Nobody had to explain the building to him. My name is Richard Joseph Spinelli. I am the cofounder of Sandhills Real Estate, a student housing owner and operator working around Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, where we run 13 assets and 27 units housing more than 100 students, all of it inside a few blocks of Belmont. This is written for anyone running a handful of older buildings who is still calling whoever is available. The argument is that concentration does something to your repair work that has nothing to do with how fast you can drive. A Trade Who Knows the Building Diagnoses Faster Most of the time a repair takes is not repair. It is orientatio...
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