Ever miss your college dorm lifestyle?

Well now you can get that every day. A company in the US is developing properties which somewhat mimic the traditional college dorm setup (just a tad classier) and offer lots of common areas for you to get social with your fellow tenants. As someone a few years removed from living on campus, I must say that I miss being surrounded by friendly faces all the time.

When I was on campus being able to do a wide range of activities nearby was great. Friendly smiles were everywhere, and these common areas were there to help break the ice. I think college is the only place where your life is fully immersed with those of the people around you, and it's a unique experience.

What do you guys think about this idea? Will these units sell out instantly from people looking to re-live that experience or at least certain aspects of it? Or do you guys feel like you've outgrown the whole social-living thing?

 

Basically they give you less space (lol) in exchange for more and better quality common areas. Idea is that in today's day and age people don't need too much space and whatever to live in, but would rather have fun/opportunity to meet other people. Apparently the buildings are designed to promote social interaction whereas a regular apartment building typically feels pretty dead.

 

I'd imagine that most people who do this are younger professionals, but I feel like it needs to be marketed to certain types of people to maximize the social aspect, which helps to ensure that the people who will be sharing a space together may have something in common. There's nothing worse than having to share common space with someone who you resent.

 

Lol, for younger professionals who haven't managed to find a decent partner during college life. Just a bunch of awkward leftovers who are still busy swiping on their tinder hoping to get a hit. Imagine getting stuck in a building with people who you have had unpleasant experiences with. The whole building will just turn into some shitfest in several years. This is one of those things that sound somewhat cool in concept, but in real life would be a disaster.

 

There were three of us in one room that had cockroaches and a mouse we called Tolik. I ain't coming back to that sh*t.

You killed the Greece spread goes up, spread goes down, from Wall Street they all play like a freak, Goldman Sachs 'o beat.
 

Reading this reminded me of my experience minus the mouse... as the top bunk I had a 1ft clearance from my head to the popcorn ceiling as I slept and the walls were literally cinderblocks (no sheetrock). Awful awful experience.

Had two roommates - one did homework at 1am in the room with laptop screen on max brightness while blasting pandora radio (refused to study outside the room, even after asking). the other spoke to himself while he slept and wore the same clothes during the day to bed - rarely cleaning them. I'm never going back to that.

 

I would only consider living in a place like this on a very short-term basis (i.e. 3 months). I could see this as a temporary stop-gap between college and a real apartment. Some people need to cash a few paychecks before they can afford to make a deposit payment or buy furniture. But the hassle of moving twice in a quarter would suck. As a long-term solution? I mean, if you're a commie or a broke gender studies major/barista and want a built in crowd to talk about inequality with, then maybe.

 

Do they include bunk-beds for me and my frat brahs so we can listen to each other crush box late night after dt? I want my boys to hear my prayers to long deceased relatives begging them to grant me the strength for a quarter chub when I'm drunk in the 4th quarter trying to put up enough of a stiffy to add another tally to the list of box I've crushed.

 

Once hipsters die out, I really don't know how viable this will be.

These places will be filled with Bro's in their mid to late 20's looking to relive the college experience. Yet no self-respecting woman over the age of 25 would subject herself to these living conditions. If these Bro's ain't crushing box, then demand will ultimately die down.

Real estate economics 101.

 

I don't know if this is just because you have not traveled abroad or if you're just disillusioned that 20 year old people exist in our culture that struggle with paying rent or just highly desire living in a place like East Village rather than the studio above your ghetto tattoo parlor. I honestly see this being a place that young people would like to live in, but there's not many neighborhoods where it would work well. You'd have to worry about neighborhoods gentrifying to the point where all other young people get forced out and your local dive bar get gobbled up and becomes a Whole Foods.

I'm in my 20s though and I'd probably live somewhere like this. But a few concerns:

  • A few people here are talking about targeting the kind of people who work in finance/consulting/tech by requiring incomes to be met. This is a terrible idea. You want to help young people find places to live in suburban neighborhoods that isn't costing $3000 for a studio. What about your bartenders, your media employees (I mean, I basically know that most of the people in NYC working finance are dudes, but 100% of the people I know working in media are females in NYC... so that solves your ratio problem hah), construction workers, etc.

  • Liability. What happens when one of your suitemates (?) clogs their toilet and it destroys the room. Who cleans? What about drug use? What happens when you find out you're living close to a meth head? What about a suitemate that brings back a girl every night and they're banging loudly all night every night? Some people have talked about user agreements - I'm not familiar with how those work but what happens if someone ditches their agreement because they felt unsafe from drug use, complained about noise, etc.?

 

Very viable in my opinion, especially in Europe. Those units would be in high demand for 24-35yo mid-to-upper middle class people. At least 85% of the 25-30yos (and most people do not settle down by the age of 35 nowadays) that I know of share an appartment for obvious reasons, so why not make a lifestyle out of this after all. Erasmus Mundus and other recent tech developments have changed the urban dynamics, and this is clearly an opportunity for the savvy entrepreneur to seize. There has to be some sort of efficient selection process however, but it's a very viable project indeed. Those units would foster networking opportunities and would bring people together that would have never met if it weren't for these dorms. Think about it, most unicorns nowadays sell "networks" and do not provide any tangible products... and this falls in the same category.

 
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How much can you screen the tenants?

In America at least, you really can only screen on the basis of income, rental history, and criminal history. Tons of discrimination laws go into this.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

honestly, when i was in my 20s, I would have lived in a place like this with all my bros... when all you do is work, date, party, work, repeat 7 days a week, who needs a large living space?

The tough part about this is how the common space is used and the house rules...like what if some jackass is playing his drums at 7am every morning or you have an alcoholic neighbor that pisses on your door every night when he gets home from the bars/clubs at 3am?

 
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honestly, when i was in my 20s, I would have lived in a place like this with all my bros... when all you do is work, date, party, work, repeat 7 days a week, who needs a large living space?

Living in this arrangement with your friends would be a lot different than living with strangers though, no?

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

This will be huge, I am actually developing something similar to this right now. The location makes this viable. You have to be in a demand area. The interesting thing is that this is just an alternative to what a super luxury building on 5th ave is. It will create micro-communities, what I am going for is trying to attract the start up crowd in my area and look at funding some of them. Will this idea be big in the general population? No, however think about bankers, they spend most of their time at the office. Would you guys pay $900/month for a bedroom with a private bathroom in Manhattan? Wouldn't it be a bonus to have a 800sqft room that you could hang out in at times. It definitely is not a thing for most older adults but is great for new grads and entrepreneurs.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 
undefined:

This will be huge, I am actually developing something similar to this right now. The location makes this viable. You have to be in a demand area. The interesting thing is that this is just an alternative to what a super luxury building on 5th ave is. It will create micro-communities, what I am going for is trying to attract the start up crowd in my area and look at funding some of them. Will this idea be big in the general population? No, however think about bankers, they spend most of their time at the office. Would you guys pay $900/month for a bedroom with a private bathroom in Manhattan? Wouldn't it be a bonus to have a 800sqft room that you could hang out in at times. It definitely is not a thing for most older adults but is great for new grads and entrepreneurs.

So you're going to be an institutional version of Erlich Bachman?

Before your post I thought the idea was kind of silly but it makes sense thinking of young bankers who go to NYC for a two year time period or all of the tech guys that flock to the Bay Area without knowing anyone. Can you make the numbers work in those types of places with ultra high land costs and/or limited inventory (and high cost) of buildings you could convert?

 

The area I am in has a pretty good supply of tech entrepreneurs and pretty low real estate costs when compared to SF and NYC. However I think you could make this idea work in either of those places. It is just comes down to effective pricing. Let's say for example I buy a building in midtown and it costs me 3B (I have no idea on the actual costs of mixed use or commercial space in NYC). Lets say this nets me around 2M sqft. That is roughly 1.5K/sqft considering with info I could find online for rental price per sqft this seems not to unreasonable if maybe a little high. Now my question becomes at what price do I have to charge rentals units to make a profit after conversion costs. Depending on the number of units and what not it will be in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Lets say I spend 100M and develop 5000 of these units. That is 1.5M sqft of leaseable space and 500K in common space. Now the question becomes how much do I have to charge and is that price bearable by the current rental market? That I won't know until I establish several required variables.

What I am looking at doing is seeding ideas I think are viable and have a good chance at becoming a marketable product. If I can provide a living space and development space as well as seed money I feel it gives me a slight edge over other people looking to fund the initial development. I am not looking to actually fully fund development as I don't have that kind of money.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

As an undergrad, I'd probably spring at something like this after graduation if I was able to meet most of the other tenets to ensure that it wasn't a bunch of socially autistic kids. Cheap is a plus, easy way to socialize for an hour on a Tuesday night without having to make a big deal of going out, and it puts you in touch with kids your age. That being said, I'd only do this if I was going to city without friends, because it'd be nicer to crash with a couple friends than do some shared community.

I wonder how'd you'd be able to "filter" out some people to ensure it didn't become a slum. Would straight income be enough?

 
The Real Max:

I wonder how'd you'd be able to "filter" out some people to ensure it didn't become a slum. Would straight income be enough?

There are a large number of laws restricting and banning the "Filtering" of potential residents

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

+1. Noise is why I moved out of my dorms and into my own apt as fast as F****** possible after freshman year. Was it more expensive than a dorm? Sure. And it had it's own set of other issues with the need to do some extra dividing of bills with roommates and that sort of thing, but the dorms at my school(SEC) were a shitshow. Maybe that isn't the case everywhere, but I doubt it.

The difference here just being that everyone is paying their own way and aren't blowing mommy and daddy's life savings to party 7 nights a week and skip class. I'd be curious to see how you could filter the tenants though. Require a certain income and no cosigner's allowed?(keeps out the ones living off other people's money that just want low rent to party all the time) Is it even possible to do that with the anti discrimination laws and whatnot? I mean really it just sounds like a multi-unit(not family because they'd all be 1/1's) complex that encourages socializing amongst the analysts in a certain salary range in a high density area. So a bar on friday night but without the booze and 3am desperation. With a questionable number of women around.(probably a sexist comment but...)

You know, the more I think about it, and if this was ten years ago and I didn't have kids and shit, and if the tenant mix could be controlled and noise wasn't an issue(enforced quiet hours or whatever), sign me up. Damn. I talked myself into it, ha!

 

Can apartment buildings establish certain career requirements? There is "group housing" in most zoning ordinances. Perhaps the building could limit tenancy to "persons employed in financial services or consulting industries" or something like that to keep out the riff raff. If you set absolute rents too low, you'll have lower-income persons using it as arbitrage.

Also, I could see the building becoming de facto nearly "all male" unless men's and women's floors or corridors are established. And just to be safe, in the People's Republic of NYC, San Fran, D.C., etc., you'll have to make sure gender is based on one's gender identity rather than their actual sex.

Array
 

•Race or color •National origin •Religion •Sex •Familial status (families with children) •Disability

These are what you cannot discriminate on the basis of. Everything else is free game, but if one of these protected classes makes a prima facie case (valid on its face) of discrimination such as showing that a white and black person were offered differing terms, then the burden is on the lessor to show that the reasons for the discrepancy was something other than race. However, the court/jury has the power to not accept that reason. So, to my knowledge (unless there's something somewhere I have missed) you can just require that your tenants have positions in whatever industry you to desire.

Not legal advice. Don't go doing this on the basis of that analysis.

 

Copy, don't take legal advice from rando on interwebz =)

But seriously, so you could just say bring me your offer letter for $100k, or whatever random number you go with, and.... profit? Interesting. Should have paid more attention to that legal course in business school, maybe I'd remember some of this. This has been a fun diversion on a boring afternoon.

 
undefined:

*Race or color
*National origin
*Religion
*Sex
*Familial status (families with children)
*Disability

These are what you cannot discriminate on the basis of. Everything else is free game, but if one of these protected classes makes a prima facie case (valid on its face) of discrimination such as showing that a white and black person were offered differing terms, then the burden is on the lessor to show that the reasons for the discrepancy was something other than race. However, the court/jury has the power to not accept that reason. So, to my knowledge (unless there's something somewhere I have missed) you can just require that your tenants have positions in whatever industry you to desire.

Not legal advice. Don't go doing this on the basis of that analysis.

There's also disparate impact, so if persons of color are considerably less likely to be allowed to live at the unit, regardless of the reason, it may also come back to bite the owner.

Array
 

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