Furnished Houses for Foreigners: Discovering a Niche Market Round the Corner

Abstract

Universities have been providing housing to majority of enrolled foreign students on the campuses. However, due to financial constraints, it has not been possible to accommodate all the students within campuses. The trend among the students to hire apartments outside the campuses has been seen to be prevalent globally. The university administrations encourage students to go for private accommodation in order to cope with serious shortage of spaces in hostels. In such situation, the townships around campuses cater for the housing needs of the students and in turn are viable investment opportunities which also provide an alternative housing facility, most specifically for the foreign students. In this paper, we investigated through questionnaire survey, the housing requirements of foreign students enrolled in three universities of Jamshoro. Findings of this study suggest that there are few furnished houses available in the townships on the campus vicinities. Their requirement for furnished houses has pointed toward a newly emerging niche market for potential investors. Simultaneously, the universities may also invest on building furnished apartments as evident in most foreign universities.