PHILADELPHIA-Welcome to the Philly 411, our monthly columnon real estate happenings in the Metro area supplied with intelfrom David Jacobs, a director at Llenrock Group, alocal commercial real estate investment-banking firm. You can alsofollow their bloghere. Opinions are the author's own.

Temple University poses a unique proposition for commercial realestate in Philadelphia. With its campus located on NorthBroad Street, an area that would otherwise be considered no man’sland for commercial real estate developers due to demographicconcerns, Temple offers an enormous amount of in-placedemand.

Student applications rose sharply in 2000, with many studentsciting the big-city atmosphere as a draw. The university had a 60%jump in enrollment in the last decade. But the sudden growth spurtforced the university to declare in 2004 that it no longer couldprovide on-campus housing for students after the first two years.That sent private developers scrambling to build or rehab nearbyproperties, both east and west of Broad Street, but suchoverzealousness could be dangerous.