Students and the City: Student Rental Behaviour During COVID-19 in the Example University Town

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of unexpected changes, but also provided a unique opportunity to study the rental behavior of students under specific conditions, as lockdowns and implemented restrictions have also reached the sphere of higher education. This article attempts to shed light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' rental behavior on the example of a university town. The main source of data were questionnaires, data from the Statistics Poland, public and private institutions involved in real estate market research, and professional media. As the survey was carried out directly among a group of student-tenants and was supplemented by a survey among landlords, it provided information on students' behavior on the rental market. Students have proved to be extremely elastic tenants, though a clear difference in the behavior of first degree, second degree and unified masters students was observed.