How Much Does a University Campus Cost?
I know this information is not readily available and likely outside of the scope of many people here, but I'm interested in eventually purchasing and repurposing college campuses, and I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge of how to estimate how much they would sell for.

I haven't found a search term that brings up anything like this; searching [University Name] property value, real estate, etc.. comes up with a lot of college expense related questions, as you might expect. I specifically am interested in a lot of the bigger universities, particularly ASU, OSU, Michigan State, UNLV, and the UCs.

Does anyone know a place where this information is available, a way of calculating its resale value, or any other methods of answering this question I'm not thinking of?
[{"id": "esmmjgf", "text": "Big if true.\n\nFun thought experiment. Assuming fee simple. The value of a university campus would be damn near impossible to comp to market transactions.\n\nThus, the best approach would be a discounted cash flow.\n\nYour unlevered cost of capital would be pretty pretty dang low, especially with a state backed university as your tenant.\n\nPerhaps you can assume Class B office rents for the surrounding submarket to be a basic PSF rent assumption.\n\nWould be interesting to consider how you\u2019d master-plan future expansion of the campus, those are always growing. You might get some dev fee.\n\nEither way, you could multiply total rentable square feet by the market rent PSF for a rent projection. Expenses are hard to guess, but maybe assume NNN.\n\nFor the dorms, student housing is a robust enough industry to layer market assumptions. You can model that more or less painlessly. UNLV I think even had publicly comped players in their community.\n\nHappy to dive into more detail.", "replies": [{"id": "esmvixi", "text": "It is a fun thought experiment. Campuses like MSU, basically the entire place is going to be historic, right? There's a fairly robust trade in historic buildings in my market, I don't know about in East Lansing tho. \n\nMost dorms are drastically lacking in amenities compared to student housing tho. Crappy old \"historic\" buildings whose only value is proximity to other old historic buildings which are presumably, in this scenario, also of little value.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esmnphy", "text": "A major university? Billions", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esmqf5p", "text": "Speaking specifically about Texas public universities the school owns the school and usually far more land to allow expansion. They have no real reason to access cash. Not sure what your plan would be. If you'd be looking for a sell/leaseback I can't see any situation to where that would be beneficial to the state. If you'd be looking to purchase a school that has closed and you're looking to reposition the whole property then just consider land comps. I'd need more detail as to what your plan would be to think about how to value something like that.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esmvnsq", "text": "There are plenty of colleges closing - but they're a long way from the Big 10 you're talking about. Those places are thriving. It's small, private liberal arts/religious colleges and HBCUs that are closing.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esmwite", "text": "Location Location Location then I'll answer.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esmzhko", "text": "Funny you say that. I live in a well off area in the south. \n\nAnyways there is a large shopping center in my town that has a 80,000 population but the town does not have a university. I\u2019ve always thought it would be a good college town and this massive shopping center complex (that\u2019s failing) would be perfect to repurpose to a university. \n\nI\u2019ve thought about this a great deal.", "replies": [{"id": "esn711q", "text": "Act on it. Get some investors together and go for it!", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esn3zkf", "text": "The College of New Rochelle is for sale right now.  I think A&amp;G is the Broker.", "replies": [{"id": "esn82go", "text": "Them and B6", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esn7l7t", "text": "Whatever the location a mall might be a good comparison.\n\nA big school like ASU or the UCs would be hard to price unless they post some sort of annual report where they list assets.\n\nhttps://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.asu.edu/fs/documents/annual_reports/ASU-2018-CAFR.pdf", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esn8ba6", "text": "Look at the Marina Heights development in Tempe, AZ. ASU owns the land, did a long term ground lease and developed the new State Farm regional HQ. Development traded upon completion last year for almost $1B. \n\n[Marina Heights](https://azbigmedia.com/real-estate/commercial-real-estate/behind-the-scenes-of-the-928-million-marina-heights-sale/)", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esn9491", "text": "The problem is that there are entire micro economies and adjacent real estate supported by the school. Making that land not a school would have catastrophic impact to your land value as well as likely bring blight to the area. Fwiw I've done a lot of student housing financing", "replies": [{"id": "esqj9ug", "text": "Hmm I wasn't thinking about all that. Very interestung", "replies": [{"id": "esr2fnl", "text": "A huge amount of retail, housing and ancillary business near campus is fueled by students and their loans. Your first consideration should be how to capture the loan money, or how your business plan can generate better returns than feeding off the student loans", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "eso3p6b", "text": "You\u2019d need to start with a redevelopment plan. Who are you targeting as a tenant? Turn into an office park with office tenants? Target one large corporate user to take over as a HQ campus? Government user would be a good target. Value of the campus changes based on what the user is willing to pay. Rent*SF for the space, get expenses from the owner, or use a market ratio from the type of user your targeting. The property will get a new assessment for taxes, so you need to factor that in. Rents - vacancy rate - expenses gets your NOI. Cap your NOI and you should have a rough value. Your cap rate would be based on the source of of the cash flow, or the type of user, from comps in the area.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "esyj5r2", "text": "Many universities financial statements are public information. You can find out at least original cost of buildings and land in the footnotes.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]