Housing Passion Rooted in Dorm Days
November 17, 2008 • By Ansa Edim, Contributing Writer
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Best friends Gary Beatty and Craig Smith met almost 40 years ago in the marching band at Frederick Community College in Maryland. When JMU began accepting men, both transferred. They spent their entire undergraduate careers living on campus as resident advisors in Ashby Hall and continued to work with students after graduating by working in Admissions and Student Life.
Beatty (’72) rents to 181 students and Smith (’71) rents to more than 400 students at a time. After graduation they saw there was going to be need for off-campus housing.
Both Beatty and Smith, along with other property owners, have been informally approached by JMU to sell, but both said they are in this for the future of their families and they are not looking to sell.
“I’m not in this for myself,” Beatty said. “I’m in this for my children.” His three children and Smith’s two were practically raised together.
According to Beatty, the profit that they are looking to make won’t be made for years to come. “For years you may even lose money,” he said.
For the last 28 years, the two have been buying property around campus and renting it out to students.
Beatty decided to make an investment in housing in Harrisonburg after hearing that a friend in Columbus, Ohio was successful at renting to students in the Ohio State University area.
Beatty says it’s not especially difficult to rent to students, but because he is his own boss, it is especially time consuming.
“I may be cutting the grass or carrying things… I can’t always anticipate my schedule,” Beatty said.
Students require more attention because they are more active, so there is more maintenance. Beatty may spend a morning picking up beer bottles or fixing broken windows.
Smith, on the other hand, has been fortunate enough to get some help from son, Craig Smith Jr., who graduated from JMU five years ago. According to Smith, “The last five years working with him have been the most satisfying of the 28 as a father.”
As JMU grows, so does off-campus housing. New zoning restrictions have given way to new complexes like Charleston Townes, Copper Beech and North 38, which provide a type of luxury housing to students.
According to Beatty and Smith, this does not pose a threat to them.
“I have no problem with that,” Beatty said.
Smith added: “It’s all about location, location, location.”
Most of their properties are along South Main Street, which is close to campus and offers plenty to do, according to Beatty and Smith. Beatty rents properties in University Court and at other locations like the Theta Chi house, while Smith owns Campus Condos.
There are also fewer restrictions since their properties are not brand new.
City restrictions limit the number of unrelated persons living in a house to two, pushing new developments farther and farther away from campus. Luckily for Beatty and Smith, they had the properties before the zoning restrictions went into effect, allowing them to continue to rent houses to students as well as maintain student properties close to campus.
The new housing is expensive compared to their properties, and for Beatty and Smith, the pricey apartments and townhomes may bring them more business. The average rent for a single bedroom in a property owned by Beatty is $350 a month and the cheapest rent offered is $255, but utilities are not included in the rent and homes come unfurnished.
The cost of utilities depends greatly on whether the property is a house, townhouse or apartment and the number of students splitting the bill. Senior renter Megan Dwyer pays $285 a month, and after paying utilities, her monthly total is still just $350.
Dwyer has been living in Campus Condos, off Stonewall Drive, for the last two years. Of her landlord, Smith, she says he is “very nice and accommodating.”
Once, the carpet in her three-bedroom apartment was mysteriously soaking up water and Smith was very helpful and available to figure out the problem and fix it quickly. Beatty is his own maintenance man and handles all of his tenants’ problems himself.
Private owners are able to keep rent so low because bigger complexes have a lot more costs to run the complex and those people need to get paid, according to Beatty. People working in the offices and in maintenance all have their salaries reflected in the rent.
Private owners like Beatty and Smith lend their 28 years of experience to managing properties, leaving much of the advertising to the students.
Smith said, “half of the properties turnover each year,” meaning that people who live in one of his properties now just hand them off to friends. He makes use of a JMU’s Off-Campus Web site and only advertises a unique property like the Theta Chi fraternity house.
Next year Dwyer, who found Smith on the Off-Campus Web site, is handing down her apartment to her younger brother, Robert, who is now a freshman.
Smith and Beatty don’t consider themselves competitors, because for the most part, their customers are repeat customers and current students recommend the new ones. They love what they are doing and often trade stories of what methods worked for each. They will continue to accumulate properties in order to eventually turn a good profit and secure a future for their children.
Contact Ansa Edim at edimaa@jmu.edu
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Best of the 'Burg Supplement
April 29, 2010 Issue in Print
Frederick College was not a community college in MD but a four year college in Portsmouth, VA. When the school closed in 1968 and became a community college, several of us including Gary Beatty and Craig Smith from the band transferred to JMU which at that time was still Madison College.