UT’s next housing buildings also replace places being lost

Whitis is scheduled to open with 1,055 beds for 2027–28, but Dobie will be unavailable that year. I would plan next fall around the rooms UT offers, rather than treating every new Whitis bed as an extra choice.

Two started university projects announce 1,395 gross beds for 2027 and 2028. Another started private project advertises 350-plus beds without a verified residential opening year. Beyond those are proposals, approvals and changing plans whose bed counts or delivery dates still need checking.

The dated starts and the projects still waiting

Project	Published bed count	Timing and status	Who can use it?
Whitis Court	1,055	UT’s October 21 advisory gives June 1, 2027 project completion; housing targets 2027–28	University residence-hall residents, under the applicable offer process
Law School Village	340 beds in 280 apartments	Financial close and construction start announced May 2026; 2028–29 target	Targeted to law students
Eleven03	More than 350 planned	Groundbreaking and active shell permit verified; residential opening year not settled	Private student housing; final terms need checking
9 HUNDRED / Boardwalk	New beds not verified	Approved site plan, active demolition permit and a filer’s July 2029 target	A proposed new apartment count cannot be used as beds
Bell’s Beach	Competing versions	Building permits for the 75-unit version withdrawn October 6, 2026	The 187-bed investor version isn’t counted as committed delivery

The primary starting points are UT’s current Whitis advisory, Greystar’s Law School Village announcement, and the Eleven03 capital partner. The full ledger preserves other candidates and the permit sources.

Law School Village’s 340 beds aren’t 340 interchangeable undergraduate dorm places. Its announcement describes university financing with Greystar developing and managing the project. A private partner’s involvement doesn’t turn every part of the arrangement into private funding.

The verified dated-start subtotal has no 2029 entry. The two projects in that subtotal target earlier years; it doesn’t forecast zero student housing in 2029.

Whitis minus Dobie needs a comparable capacity count

UT’s 2021 Dobie acquisition announcement described 980 physical beds. The current catalog describes approximately 750 students. Neither verifies how many operated places UT will remove from the fall-2027 offer pool.

Illustrative subtraction	Result	Why it isn’t a net-capacity forecast
1,055 Whitis minus 980 historical Dobie beds	75	Uses an older physical-bed count
1,055 Whitis minus approximately 750 catalog places	About 305	Uses a rounded student-capacity description

Those are two calculations with different inputs, not the ends of a forecast interval. A comparable fall-2026 operating roster and fall-2027 opening roster would settle the increase. The confirmed Dobie closure covers 2027–28; it doesn’t establish a permanent closure through 2029.

The old roughly 200-place Whitis complex was already removed before the fall-2026 baseline. Subtracting it again from a 2026-to-2027 comparison would count that loss twice. UT buying an existing building also changes ownership without creating physical beds.

The recent private wave was much bigger

Delivery year	Named projects	Gross published beds
2023	The Mark 975; Rambler 817; Rise 1,000	2,792
2024	Union on 24th 1,448; Union on San Antonio 991	2,439
2025	Icon 555; Villas on 24th 670	1,225
Three-year named subset	Seven projects	6,456

Undergraduates increased by 3,005 between fall 2022 and fall 2025. That is about 2.1 gross new beds in this subset per additional undergraduate. It isn’t proof of a surplus: closures, shared-room changes, graduates, non-UT residents and existing students moving closer all affect demand.

Near-campus demand can grow faster than total enrollment. At UT’s fall-2026 count, a two-percentage-point increase in the share choosing nearby housing would represent about 1,103 students. That is an illustration of the scale, not a measured migration count.

More construction and higher rent can happen together

A City study’s inflation-adjusted price per bed fell from $1,479 in 2004 Q3 to $1,275 in 2023 Q3, a 13.8% decline. Another appraisal describes nominal per-bed rent increasing during the 2012–2018 construction wave. Changing buildings, purchasing power and demand can make both descriptions true.

Industry snapshots also show cycles. Yardi’s January 2026 table reports UT asking rent down 0.4% annually; May reports a 4.5% increase. The reported private beds under construction fell from 3,460 in January 2024 to 360 in January 2026, an 89.6% reduction in that snapshot. University projects and later starts sit outside that particular comparison.

These findings support rent relief as a plausible effect of supply, but don’t measure the rent change caused by a specific tower. They also don’t support a rule that concessions always change before advertised rents.

The number a student needs is usable choice

The existing directory has 161 places and networks, including entries without prices and different geographic areas. Its 2,329 priced options are plan/term variants, not 2,329 available beds. Two academic-year offers collected on the same day aren’t two years of market history.

For your search, the important question is how many rooms meet your budget, eligibility, privacy and dates. A law-student apartment, a shared cooperative room and an undergraduate dorm don’t serve identical requirements. A gross citywide bed total won’t tell you whether one of them is available to you.

I would welcome the new capacity while budgeting for the choice I can secure. The next opening matters, but so do the rooms leaving the market and the students each building serves.

How we got this

Research checked November 1–2, 2026 enumerates 87 individual project rows and tracks removals and overlapping portfolios apart from them. Forty rows with both a dated year and capacity total 20,676 beds across their different periods; that incomplete historical sum isn’t current stock. Workbook totals, the recent 6,456-bed subset and the 1,395 dated started-bed subtotal were independently checked. The full manuscript links source periods, private-project permit changes and the missing capacity inputs.