Duke Buys Rental Community for Student Housing

Duke University paid an apartment owner $43 million to take over the Blue Light Living apartments. The school will add the apartments to the school’s housing inventory, instead of building new ones. The school plans to make a number of minor changes to the 84-unit building before allowing students to move in next fall.

The Triad Business Journal reports the school says the sale is a way to deal with the area’s acute student housing shortage. The move by Duke comes as the university experiences a record high number of student applications. The apartments at 1605 Erwin Road in Durham have a total assessed value of about $10 million. It was owned by the Boy family.

Duke is not the only area school grappling with the student housing issue. Johnson & Wales University, a private college with a campus in North Carolina, announced plans to convert a hotel it owns in Charlotte into student housing.