CoStar Group Acquires Student Housing Listing Service

WASHINGTON, DC—CoStar Group has acquired Off Campus Partners, LLC (OCP) an online multifamily marketplace service for student housing in the US.

Founded in Charlottesville, Va., in 2000 by a University of Virginia student, OCP enters into exclusive agreements with universities to provide an off-campus housing listing service for students, parents, and faculty/staff. Currently, it has existing contracts with 132 universities servicing over 2 million off-campus students. OCP university partners include the University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, the University of Arizona, Boston College, the University of Miami, Clemson, the University of Iowa and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“There are over 17 million college students in need of housing near universities paying approximately $100 billion in rent annually,” said CoStar Group CEO Andrew C. Florance. “This is a massive market with tremendous growth opportunities for us to partner with more universities and attract more advertisers, especially small independent owners.”

Besides gaining greater exposure to this asset class, the acquisition will also offer cross-sell opportunities to CoStar. Florance says that the majority of OCP’s advertisers are independent owners “who are excellent candidates for the full suite of services we plan to offer soon on our Apartments.com network.”

“Each student renter offers us an early opportunity to develop a long-lasting connection to the Apartments.com brand as they near the time when they will enter the workforce,” he adds.