NEW YORK CITY—This past July 30, Standard & Poor's upgraded its outlook for American Campus Communities Inc. from “stable” to “positive” and affirmed its corporate credit rating of BBB-. S&P based the outlook upgrade on the company's improving credit metrics and expectations for continued strong operating performance supported by “favorable tailwinds” in the modern student housing sector.

ACC's second-quarter results, reported a few days before the S&P upgrade, provide one indicator of student housing's tailwinds. Same-store NOI was up 4.7% over the year prior, while same-store wholly owned occupancy was 88.9% as of June 30, compared to 87.8% for the same date in 2014.

A broader measure of the sector's strength is the growth in investment sales. The outlook for buying and selling properties will be on the agenda at this year's RealShare Student Housing conference, scheduled for Sept. 1 and 2 at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas, and judging by the latest data from Real Capital Analytics, there will be a lot for the panelists to discuss.

RCA data show US sales volume of nearly $4.5 billion over the 12 months through June 30, a 45% increase over the previous 12 months. That same time period shows unit sales up 25% to 30,530 and average prices per unit also on the rise, albeit to a smaller degree: a 2% increase to $145,086.

Thus far in Q3, however, they're averaging $155,447, with recent comps from RCA ranging from $90,678 per unit to the $589,888 per unit that Harrison Street Capital paid for Dwight Lofts in Chicago. Harrison Street VP Justin Gronlie will be among the investment sales experts on the dealmaking panel that concludes RealShare Student Housing.

Over the 12 months that ended June 30, student housing cap rates compressed 59 basis points to 6.1%. However, in Q2 they reversed nearly all of the compression, averaging 6.6% during the quarter.

A look at the year-to-date buyer composition reveals that student housing ownership remains highly fragmented. Sixty percent of YTD sales transactions involved private buyers, while 23% of volume came from institutional buyers, 10% from cross-border investors and just 6% from REITs. That being said, the top buyer and seller over the past 24 months has been a REIT, the aforementioned ACC.

Joining Gronlie on the “Bottom Line: Getting the Deals Done” panel at RealShare Student Housing will be Kelli Carhartt, managing director of production and sales, central region at Freddie Mac; James Martha, managing director at TIAA-CREF; and Kevin White, acquisitions director, alternative multifamily at Virtus Real Estate Capital. Moderating the discussion will be Wayne D'Amico, president and principal, Wayne D'Amico and Co.

Also on the agenda for this year's conference will be panels on the outlook for growth in student housing, the public-private partnership model for development, construction costs, property management and trends in development, design and construction. For further information, and to register for the conference, click here.