Student housing thrives where scores of students need a place tocrash while attending classes—live, in-person, on-campus classes.What should be a solid play for commercial real estate appearsheaded for hard times.

DBRS Morningstar identifies student housingas "the next falling domino" in the commercial real estateindustry. "We foresee student housing properties beinginadvertently affected in the near to medium term by the move toonline-only classes," the credit ratings business wrote in a newreport.

To draw that conclusion, DBRS Morningstar took into accountpreleasing, the option for students to take a gap year andpoll results from College Reactionshowing "only 65% of students would return to campus if collegeswere to physically reopen for the Fall 2020 semester without acoronavirus vaccine or cure." Major student housing owner AmericanCampus Communities said recently that preleasing for the upcomingfall semester was down 40% from its normal leasing velocity,according to the DBRS Morningstar report.