Study market now to find student place to live

The CAO forms are filled in, the mocks are finishing up, and many parents' thoughts are beginning to focus on the reality that, come September, their Leaving Cert. child will probably be a college student.

Those whose children will have to leave home to go to college may already be working out a provisional budget for the year ahead, with accommodation, of course, top of the list. And those who are considering buying a house or apartment for a college-going child will, if they're being practical, start looking at their options now rather than in late summer, after results come out.

There are obvious problems with doing so: our exam system is so competitive, there is no guarantee that your student will get the place in the college of his or her choice. You might buy a good value house in Santry, five minutes walk from DCU, only to find that your child is headed for UCD. If doing what is economic was the only consideration, you would avoid college in Dublin altogether, or insist that they go to DCU, or at least Bolton Street, simply because prices on Dublin's northside are cheaper - houses in traditional UCD areas, like Bird Avenue in Booterstown, cost from £250,000-plus.

That said, the first criterion any family should have before buying a house or apartment for their student (or students) is to determine if it is a good investment. It must be sellable or let-able in the long term: many students drop out of courses or change colleges; some don't even get there.

The good news is that for the foreseeable future, you should have no difficulty renting or selling a property near a third-level institution - demand outstrips supply, and rents are rising. Two-bedroom apartments in the city centre, for example, rent for £750 to £800 a month, one-bedrooms, £500 to £600. Rents for three and four-bedroom houses can rise to £1,000-plus a month.

This, of course, is one of the reasons a growing number of parents want to buy a house - to make sure their children will have somewhere to live in their college years. Most students are paying an average weekly rent of £50 a week for a room in a house; if you have, say, two children at college for the average 36-week college year, if will cost you close to £4,000 (before you pay for their food, or living expenses), and that's the point at which the idea of buying a property can become appealing.

Some families wait until their eldest child has finished a year at college before investing: this gives the family a chance to suss out the Dublin market and safe areas for students to live in before they are joined by a brother or sister.

You will also have to decide between buying an apartment or house: second-hand apartments in the city centre cost from around £110,000 for one-beds and £160,000 for two-beds.

New apartments, or second-hand apartments which still carry tax relief against rental income may seem appealing, but work out the details carefully. You only get the tax reliefs if you are renting at a market price, and you can have an "arm's length agreement" to rent to your own child - but this may only make sense if you have other properties with rental income already.

Certainly new apartments are more expensive than second-hand, and hard to get: apartments in a Hooke & MacDonald scheme at Francis Street, near to DIT Aungier Street, to be launched shortly will not cost less than £150,000 for one-beds.

This makes a four-bed house near DCU in Glasnevin for £170,000 attractive - you will be able to rent up to three rooms for about £600 a month (£50 a week each) if you have just one child. Most families will expect to defray expenses by getting other students to share and pay rent. It is advisable to have a signed tenancy agreement, as some tenants will abuse the fact that their landlord's child is living with them, refuse to pay rent, or their share of the gas or electric and so on. The Law Society has a standard agreement which you can adjust to your own needs with your solicitor.

Sean Mason Jr of Mason Estates' Phibsboro office says that in his experience, the typical parent who plans to buy has up to £200,000 to £250,000 to spend on accommodation. His office sells houses all over Dublin 7, but although Cabra is hugely popular with young first-time buyers, families looking for student accommodation often look at the roads around the Mater Hospital where a three-bedroom house might cost around £180,000, a two-bedroom (with the living-room probably being used as a third bedroom) about £140,000.

His father, Sean Mason Sr, of the agency's Booterstown office, says that houses and apartments near UCD are now well out of reach of the average parent. Most students going to UCD live in Ranelagh/Rathmines/Rathgar as well as parts of Dundrum and Stillorgan, according to the college. Look for former local authority houses in Dundrum - Mark Smith of Douglas Newman Good's Stillorgan office says that former local authority terraced three-beds, costing around £165,000, do come up for sale. In this context, his agency's three-bed for £215,000 at the UCD end of Taney Road (see picture) seems like good value.

Agents like David Lewis of Sherry FitzGerald's Drumcondra office say that people do look for this kind of property year round; he estimates that some 25 per cent of houses in the Santry/Glasnevin area near DCU are student housing, and that it can be quite lucrative to rent your student's house out to three or four friends.

This underlines the importance of considering your options early - apart from anything else, you don't really want to have to think about buying a property at the same time as your family is grappling with the late summer high drama of getting exam results and waiting for college offers.

In the heel of the hunt, the best bet may be to steer your college-bound child away from studying in Dublin at, for the whole proposition of buying student accommodation is cheaper in most other centres. In Limerick, for example, even in these boom times, it is possible to buy a four-bedroom semi-detached house in Caherdavin, near the Limerick Institute of Technology, for less than £100,000, according to Gillian Dunne of Sherry FitzGerald's Limerick office.