WASHINGTON, DC—With college enrollments up 40% in the past decade and very little in the way of on-campus development to house these new students, the opportunities in the student housing sphere have risen exponentially. Yet to date, very little data has been available to developers, investors and operators of off-campus student housing. Until now, that is.

Last week, the National Multi Housing Council and the National Student Housing Council released their latest research on the market. The organizations published their first “Off-Campus Student Housing Income and Expense Benchmarking Survey” in 2010, studying operations and management of off-campus properties—specifically examining industry performance data on the sector and established its first performance benchmarks. The third and latest study updates and expands on the prior reports, with data from 25 companies in 46 states covering 370 properties with 75,206 units and 212,846 beds.

This supply and demand imbalance between the number of students in higher education and the means to house them, say the survey’s authors, “creates new market opportunities for off-campus student housing at the same time some colleges and universities are increasingly considering privatizing on-campus student housing for a variety of fiscal and logistical reasons.”