1380 19th St, Boulder, CO 80302

THE WIDEST RENT GAP IN BOULDER STUDENT HOUSING

The rent story at Thomas Jefferson is unusually clear. At $2,000 per unit ($1,000/bed, $2.35/SF), current pricing reflects ownership philosophy rather than any deficiency in the real estate. The two-bedroom comp set averages $3,783 per unit ($1,891/bed) across 14 comparable properties — placing Thomas Jefferson at an 89% discount to prevailing market rates. That is the widest embedded rent differential available in Boulder student housing today.

A $850,000 renovation ($50,000 per unit) repositions the asset at $3,500 per unit ($1,750/bed), still 7.5% below the comparable average. Buyers are not being asked to manufacture demand or force a thesis onto a compromised asset. The opportunity is to bring a well-located property closer to where the market already is — and to do so with a single, repeatable scope of work across 17 identical floor plans.

CU BOULDER — A DEMAND ENGINE WITHOUT PEER

For Fall 2025, CU drew a record 68,000 applicants (+20% year-over-year) and increased total enrollment 3.4% to more than 38,800 students. A 91.2% retention rate ensures a self-renewing tenant pool that does not depend on a single admissions cycle. On-campus housing is guaranteed only for freshmen and sophomores, pushing more than 30,000 upper-division and graduate students into the private rental market each year.

Thomas Jefferson sits directly in the path of that demand. Properties with true walkability to campus consistently benefit first from Boulder’s strong preleasing patterns, structurally low vacancy, and durable rent growth. The tenant pool here is not episodic. It is recurring, institutional in scale, and deepening — a p rofile that makes the asset’s below-market rents even more anomalous.

STRUCTURAL SUPPLY DEFICIT — BY DESIGN, NOT BY CYCLE

Non-dorm student demand in Boulder has grown at a 10-year compound annual rate of 3.0%, while the city’s total rental license count has declined 2.6% since 2020 — producing an estimated supply deficit approaching 1,250 units, roughly 12% of the off-campus student population. Boulder’s 55-foot height limit, open space requirements, extensive development review process, and restrictive RH-1 zoning effectively block meaningful new multifamily construction in Goss-Grove and the immediate campus periphery. Most new supply is occurring along 28th Street, removed from the campus core.

In most markets, a well-performing asset eventually attracts competitive supply. In Boulder, that mechanism is broken by design. Existing campus-oriented housing does not just appreciate through rent growth — it benefits from the compounding scarcity of the asset class itself. For owners of well-located product, the longer the hold, the wider the moat.

UNIFORM PRODUCT, STREAMLINED EXECUTION

Every unit at Thomas Jefferson follows the same two-bedroom, two-bathroom layout. That uniformity creates uncommon efficiency across the entire ownership lifecycle. Renovation planning is simplified to a single scope of work with no mixed-unit complexity. Leasing is centered around one product type at one price point. Management overhead is minimized. Every major student housing operator in Boulder reports two-bedrooms as their fastest-leasing format — and Thomas Jefferson offers 17 of them, identically configured.

RETURN PROFILE

Levered IRRs of 50.0% (3-year), 35.2% (5-year), and 29.7% (7-year). Equity multiples of 3.21x, 4.02x, and 5.05x on total equity of $2,655,000. Exit values of $12.2M, $13.3M, and $14.7M at a 5.00% exit cap. The entire renovation is debt-funded via bridge loan holdback, with a bridge-to-permanent transition at year five. DSCR of 1.47x on the bridge, 1.40x on the permanent refi. The returns are a function of basis, location, and market depth — not leverage or aggressive underwriting.