PhDeac
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No idea where to put this so I figured I'd just start a thread. I doubt this is happening in Winston like it is in SEC towns, but it's worth reading.
[h=1]Inside the College Football Game-Day Housing Boom[/h]Game-day housing demands are driving up rents, hollowing out neighborhoods, and stoking the real estate market for second homes aimed at alumni fans.
There’s another side effect of the hot market for game-day housing, one that offers a small-town variation on a phenomenon often seen in sought-after big cities: a glut of units that sit largely empty outside the football season. Wealthy alumni superfans are buying up game-day retreats in their old college haunts. Others are investor-owned home purchased to rent out on Airbnb. At the most extreme end of this market are game-day homes expressly designed as such—Taj Mahals of gridiron fandom that might feature team logo-embossed barstools, giant flatscreens, and built-in Kegerators.
Taylor Shelton, a MSU geosciences professor, is researching this phenomenon in Starkville. Based on vacant residence counts from the Census Bureau, parcel data from the county assessor, and Airbnb listings, he estimates that game-day homes make up 5 to 10 percent of the town’s total housing stock. That share has grown steadily in the past seven years. Shelton believes it’s linked to a current dearth in affordable housing in Starkville, since home values and rents have also risen significantly. Game-day homebuyers and speculative investors can snag properties at higher prices than locals can afford.
“It’snot New York, San Francisco, or anywhere else with a booming hot housing market that’s experiencing hyper-gentrification and displacement,” he said. “But game-day houses represent the bleeding edge of where that element of the real estate market is going here.”
Apart from their effects on affordability, these secondary homes can fray the community fabric in some of these towns. Visiting fans show up on Friday, make a racket, and then vanish; some locals end up wishing they saw more faces next door throughout the year. It was “nice having neighbors,” Linda Gahan, an emeritus professor at Clemson University, told the Greenville News about her block near campus, where several properties have been snapped up and now sit mostly unoccupied.
Ashley Crites, the planning director in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sees the same thing happening out her window. A recent study by the city found that about 19 percent of the city’s housing stock is effectively made up of secondary homes, many of them rentals and retreats for Crimson Tide fans. The rise in those occasional-use properties is likely suppressing the availability of affordable housing, the report found. When Tuscaloosa created its 45-night cap on Airbnb-type rentals a few years ago, the city spent a lot of time talking to its peers about to how to better handle the seasonal surge.
[h=1]Inside the College Football Game-Day Housing Boom[/h]Game-day housing demands are driving up rents, hollowing out neighborhoods, and stoking the real estate market for second homes aimed at alumni fans.
There’s another side effect of the hot market for game-day housing, one that offers a small-town variation on a phenomenon often seen in sought-after big cities: a glut of units that sit largely empty outside the football season. Wealthy alumni superfans are buying up game-day retreats in their old college haunts. Others are investor-owned home purchased to rent out on Airbnb. At the most extreme end of this market are game-day homes expressly designed as such—Taj Mahals of gridiron fandom that might feature team logo-embossed barstools, giant flatscreens, and built-in Kegerators.
Taylor Shelton, a MSU geosciences professor, is researching this phenomenon in Starkville. Based on vacant residence counts from the Census Bureau, parcel data from the county assessor, and Airbnb listings, he estimates that game-day homes make up 5 to 10 percent of the town’s total housing stock. That share has grown steadily in the past seven years. Shelton believes it’s linked to a current dearth in affordable housing in Starkville, since home values and rents have also risen significantly. Game-day homebuyers and speculative investors can snag properties at higher prices than locals can afford.
“It’snot New York, San Francisco, or anywhere else with a booming hot housing market that’s experiencing hyper-gentrification and displacement,” he said. “But game-day houses represent the bleeding edge of where that element of the real estate market is going here.”
Apart from their effects on affordability, these secondary homes can fray the community fabric in some of these towns. Visiting fans show up on Friday, make a racket, and then vanish; some locals end up wishing they saw more faces next door throughout the year. It was “nice having neighbors,” Linda Gahan, an emeritus professor at Clemson University, told the Greenville News about her block near campus, where several properties have been snapped up and now sit mostly unoccupied.
Ashley Crites, the planning director in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sees the same thing happening out her window. A recent study by the city found that about 19 percent of the city’s housing stock is effectively made up of secondary homes, many of them rentals and retreats for Crimson Tide fans. The rise in those occasional-use properties is likely suppressing the availability of affordable housing, the report found. When Tuscaloosa created its 45-night cap on Airbnb-type rentals a few years ago, the city spent a lot of time talking to its peers about to how to better handle the seasonal surge.
