Long-time housing trend in Athens has reversed, at least for now
By Nick Claussen
September 15, 2008
Athens residents have long been concerned about the conversion of single-family homes into student rentals, as Ohio University students have spread out more and more over the years into city neighborhoods.
The issue has been constant in Athens City Council and mayoral races, as well as in other planning efforts in the city. It also has been raised as a problem with Code Office and/or city administration, and many have just assumed the trend would continue indefinitely.
According to the Athens Code Office, though, this trend apparently has ended, at least temporarily, in the last two years.
In both 2006 and 2007, more rental properties were turned back into single-family homes, than single-family homes were turned into rentals, according to the 2006 and 2007 annual reports from the Code Office.
In 2006, for example, 27 single-family units were converted into rental properties, and 37 rental properties were converted back into owner-occupied properties.
“This is inconsistent with the trend of previous years, demonstrating a net increase in owner-occupied dwellings of 10,” the annual report for 2006 states. “This is the first recorded year of gains in the number of owner-occupied dwelling units.” The figures for the previous eight years showed an average net increase of 14 owner-occupied homes being converted to rental properties each year, according to the report.
In 2007, 30 owner-occupied units were converted to rental properties, and 46 rental properties were converted back to owner-occupied properties, according to the 2007 annual report. This resulted in a net increase of 16 owner-occupied dwellings in the city in 2007 and a net increase of 26 converted to owner-occupied over the last two years, according to the report.
Code Officer Paul Eschenbacher cited some reasons for the change over the last two years. For example, he pointed to new apartment complexes such as the University Courtyard complex relieving rental housing pressures in neighborhoods, and some people just getting tired of being landlords.
“You reach a point where you just don’t want to be a landlord anymore,” Eschenbacher said.
The figures from the Code Office don’t show where the homes are being turned back into owner-occupied, and Eschenbacher said that this trend is not happening in areas such as Mill Street and Palmer Street that are dominated by student rentals.
With new apartments opening up this year at the Palmer Place development and next year at the Summit at Coates Run development, it likely will further impact the rental market and the conversion rate, he said.
Steve Pierson, the former director of the Code Office, put together the annual reports for 2006 and 2007 and explained Aug. 29 that he was surprised when he saw the conversion figures in both years.
“Two years in a row kind of shows the trend. There are a lot of people who seem to think that neighborhood mobilization was inevitable and continuous,” Pierson said. “The statistics show the trend to be opposite of that.”
If OU increases its enrollment significantly, it could shift the conversion rate again, but for now the trend is showing that people want more owner-occupied homes in the city, Pierson said.
Several factors are contributing to this, he added, including the idea that more people may want to buy homes to live in, in the neighborhoods.
“I think a lot of it may have had to do with people wanting services that the city provides,” he said. For example, a resident of the west side has an elementary school, park, community gardens, dog park, bike path and local businesses all within walking distance, he said.
“Every amenity that makes the difference between living in the country and living in the city is right there, and it’s the same thing with the east side,” Pierson said. He added that he sees more young families living in areas on both the east and west sides of town.
Pierson stressed that the conversion figures aren’t overwhelming, but they are positive in that an undesirable trend in the city appears to be being reversed.
“Everybody has this kind of doom and gloom attitude that it’s inevitable and the town is being turned into all rentals...” Pierson said, adding that this apparently is not true.
JIM COADY, CHAIR of the Athens County Property Owners Association, said recently that while he did not have the figures in front of him and did not know exactly why the trend may be shifting, he could speculate about the things he has seen in the rental market.
He sees the rental-unit business in Athens being like a circle around the OU campus, and that circle has been contracting in recent years, Coady said.
“The more peripheral units are becoming less attractive in the rental market,” Coady said. The rental properties close to campus are still relatively easy to rent and are very popular, he added.
Supply and demand have become more equal in Athens in recent years, though, which has made the market more competitive, Coady said.
“There have been some significant increases in supply,” he added. The Palmer Place development is now bringing even more close-in apartments, he said, as it has 64 apartment units and 255 bedrooms and is opening this fall.
It will be interesting to see how the Summit at Coates Run development does, as it is adding another 870 bedrooms to the rental market in Athens in 2009, Coady said. This complex, though, is not close to campus, which makes it very different from Palmer Place, he noted.
One other impact of the increase in rental units is that the rental units in town that were lower-quality units are now becoming harder to rent, according to Coady.
Mark Shubert currently owns three rental properties in Athens, and said Aug. 29 that he has seen one of his former rental properties on Shafter Street turned back into an owner-occupied home.
He added that he has seen other rental properties in areas such as Morris Avenue also go back to owner-occupied units.
“I could see streets like Morris… turning back, because there are not that many student rentals there,” Shubert said. During his time owning different properties, he only bought an owner-occupied home and turned it into a rental once, and that was because the home was already surrounded by student rentals, Shubert said.
“Although I was offered lots of houses to buy, I never really wanted to because I didn’t want to change the demographics of the neighborhoods,” Shubert said.
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