Studentification in Germany: How investors generate profits from student tenants in Goettingen and the impacts on urban segregation

Abstract

This paper presents a study about studentification in the medium-sized university town of Goettingen, Germany. While many studentification studies focus on the transformation of owner-occupied houses into houses of multiple occupation, this study is about displacement in the rental housing market. I argue that within this context, the displacement of marginalised social groups takes place through rental prices and private landlords’ preferences for students of higher education. Hence, I focus on how landlords extract high rents from their property without making serious investments and investigate landlords’ strategies for increasing their return on investment via higher education student tenants. I explain their strategies, grounding this research in semi-structured interviews with landlords, property managers and real estate agents, complemented by statistical data. I show that different rental strategies landlords apply lead to the separation of different social groups. Hence, this paper argues that the strategies of landlords have an important impact on urban segregation and urban development in cities. Therefore, a deeper investigation of these strategies would help us achieve a better understanding of how the process of studentification proceeds and how displacement takes place.

City and campus: Exploring the distribution of socio-spatial activities of students of higher education institutes during the global pandemic

“…Because the commercial activities in HEI host cities are closely tied to the student population, this relationship affects the land use ( Gumprecht, 2003 , Gumprecht, 2008 ; Iranmanesh et al, 2021 ) with the developers in the city often trying to gain the most profit from students' preferences ( Miessner, 2020 ). The COVID-19 pandemic presented a research opportunity to explore the extent of this relationship.…”

Angewandte Kritische Geographie am Beispiel der Wohnungsmarktforschung in Göttingen

“…Gleichzeitig führt das Bevölkerungswachstum und die geringe Neubauquote zu einem angespannten Wohnungsmarkt (Frieling et al 2020). Dies erhöht die Konkurrenz der Mieter*innen um Wohnraum, weshalb Vermieter*innen Mietpreissteigerungen leicht durchsetzen können (Mießner 2020b).…”

“…Das heißt nicht, dass Studierende aktiv andere Bevölkerungsgruppen verdrängen. Studentifizierung bedeutet vielmehr, dass Eigentümer*innen bevorzugt Wohnungen an Studierende vermieten, weil diese aus verschiedenen Gründen besonders als Mieter*innen attraktiv sind (Mießner 2019(Mießner , 2020b. So sind z.B.…”

Stay or leave the city? Students and rented accommodation during COVID-19 pandemic

“…Off-campus student accommodation in the form of shared rental housing has become increasingly significant all over the world, with studies suggesting that this is having important consequences for housing markets in university towns, ie. in the UK ( Hubbard, 2009 ), Spain ( Garmendia et al, 2011 ), Germany ( Miessner, 2021 ), Canada ( Allinson, 2006 ) and USA ( Dobbs, 2013 ). Considerable attention has recently been devoted to questions of student accommodation and its consequences (Christie et al, 2002; Russo & Capel, 2007 ; Smith & Holt, 2007 ).…”