Welcome to the Student Housing Insight podcast.  This IS the podcast that connects you to the people who bring student housing to life.  What do I mean by "bringing student housing to life?" Well, it's simple really.  This niche of the real estate industry that 30 years ago was only defined as landlords who offered individual bedroom leases and disappeared from family and friends for a couple of weeks every August... has now turned into a niche that offers luxuries that few vacation resorts offer and is considered the incubator of ideas and services that conventional multi-family operators must consider in order to stay relevant in the next decade when those students become their customers.  This niche has "come to life" especially in the last 10 to 15 years.  It's my ambition to introduce you to the people that are making that happen.  I'm your host, Wesley Deese, and welcome to our first podcast.

 

So a little bit of my background.  I've been in the student housing industry for 20 years now.  I'm not going to run through my resume of how I got into the industry and people I've worked for.  That stuff will be discussed in future episodes and you can always check that stuff out at my LinkedIn page.  What I do want you to know is that I have literally "GROWN UP" in this industry.  I got started when I was in college.  I've gone from being a student worker at the site level to spending 8 years with a small merchant developer of student housing to being a COO overseeing an 11,000 bed portfolio spread from California to NY.  What you need to understand (and why I feel like I'm qualified to do this podcast) is that my perspective is very unique.  I understand the "deal" side of this sector as well as I understand the "operations" side.  Most importantly, I understand that MY strength, what I bring to this industry, is the ability to put puzzle pieces together and help make connections to get a deal done or decide quickly if a deal doesn't make sense.  So I started my own consulting and business development firm focused on the student housing industry called Providential Student Housing.  Now enough about me, let's talk about the podcast.

 

Simon Sinek is famous for encouraging people to "start with why."  It's the best way of understanding a company or organization's reason for existence and helps develop a "true north star" of how to approach situations.  So let's start there... why does the student housing industry need a podcast?  Let me first say... I believe every company, university, and every student community should be doing a podcast... or a youtube channel.  It is one of the best ways to develop helpful content for your customers to consume and understand how they can best enjoy your product, service, community, etc.  I believe AUDIO is actually going to be the preferred method of content consumption over the next decade.  You don't believe me??? then tell me why Alexa and Siri skills is one of the highest sought after and paying positions in the tech world right now.

 

But enough with that, WHY a student housing podcast...

 

There is a voice missing in the noise.  There are publications and conferences that talk a lot about the deals in the industry and touch on some of the blocking & tackling of operations but no one is telling the stories within the industry and it's by hearing the "story" that we learn.  My wife and I homeschool our kids and I see the difference in how they remember something when I use a story to explain a concept or why something was invented vs giving them facts and formulas to memorize.  So # 1 reason is to tell the story.

Since going out into the consulting world earlier this year, I've been bombarded with folks (mostly developers new to the industry) who are asking a lot of questions that honestly I feel bad charging them an hourly fee for.  I want my clients to be educated on the industry so that:

We (me and th