While the classic college experience features dorms and communal bathrooms, students at the University of Michigan are only offered one year of guaranteed housing before being pushed from their MHousing nest into the highly competitive Ann Arbor housing market. Finding housing as a student can feel like a ticking time bomb — with intense pressure to find the right home months in advance. Making matters worse, there is a significant deficit between availability and demand.
One possible relief to this pressure is the construction of new high-rise apartment complexes in the city center. The Verve, one of the most recent additions, finished construction this fall. This luxury complex, and others of its kind, have the potential to serve as a beneficial addition to the city to meet the rising demand for off-campus housing. However, these complexes are more than simple buildings, they are the beginning of a broader trend toward a more accessible and affordable housing future for students.
According to a Washtenaw County housing study by the Ann Arbor Community Foundation in 2025, Ann Arbor had 50,000 households — groups of family or non-family members who occupy a single housing unit — but only 53,000 housing units consisting of houses, apartments, condos and single rooms. This leaves Ann Arbor with a vacancy rate of 6.2% while the countywide rate is 5.8%. For context, the average vacancy rate in Detroit is around 23%, East Lansing’s is around 11% and the national average is 7.0%. These numbers indicate that finding available housing is a greater challenge for residents of Ann Arbor than for the average resident in Michigan or the United States…