Postsecondary students in Canada face a tight housing market. Some developers see that as an opportunity

About a year ago, Utile, a Montreal-based non-profit that develops and operates student rental housing, began leasing up its most recent project – a 205-bed apartment dubbed l’Ardoise (The Slate), just a few minutes’ walk from Quebec City’s Laval University campus.

It was an otherwise ordinary event, but for the fact that the seven-storey building was completed in just two years. “A speedy delivery,” muses Utile CEO Laurent Levesque, explaining that Utile was able to seize an opportunity to acquire a fully permitted development site from a condo builder that had changed its mind. “We were able to get to concrete very, very quickly.”