Student.com Housing Scraper

Get every US student housing listing on Student.com with no API key and no login: about 6,000 properties with price, floorplans, room options, amenities, real reviews, contact email and phone, office hours, and distance to the nearest university. Filter into a list, or look up a specific property by URL.

Here is one real row:

{
  "id": "0941b78d-8d34-4558-8a6b-7571bfba89e8",
  "name": "The Element Studios",
  "property_type": "Apartment",
  "address": "2526 Durwood St, Austin, TX 78704, USA",
  "city": "Austin",
  "state": "TX",
  "country": "US",
  "latitude": 30.2389969,
  "longitude": -97.7595712,
  "university": "St. Edward's University",
  "min_price": 900,
  "price_currency": "USD",
  "rating": 3.5,
  "review_count": 20,
  "wheelchair_accessible": false,
  "phone_number": "(512) 745-2001",
  "contact_email": "sbush@smmtx.com",
  "website": "http://www.elementstudiosaustin.com/",
  "amenities": ["Rooftop Terrace", "Communal Laundry", "Swimming Pool", "Pet Friendly"],
  "vibes": ["coffee-food", "parks-greenery"],
  "reviews": [
    { "rating": 5, "content": "Great location and staff.", "author_name": "A Resident", "source": "Google" }
  ],
  "listing_url": "https://www.student.com/us/tx/austin/p/the-element-studios-8fkayq",
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-11T22:00:00.000Z"
}

What it does

Reads Student.com's own property index directly instead of paginating its search UI, then reads each property's page for its full detail, and normalizes every listing into a flat row.

• Search filters the property index into a list: by state, city, property name, property type, university, price range, rating, review count, wheelchair accessibility, or whether a contact email or phone number is on file.
• Look up resolves exact Student.com property URLs, one row per URL. A URL that doesn't resolve comes back as an error row.

Missing source values are returned as null, never invented.

Why this scraper

• Real reviews, not just a star rating. Actual review text, reviewer name, date and source for every property, not a summary number.
• Direct contact email and phone, when Student.com has one. Filter to only properties with a contact email for outreach, not every listing regardless of whether it's reachable.
• Floorplan-level and room-level pricing. floorplans (bedrooms, bathrooms, price and square footage per plan) and room_options (ensuite/kitchen/bathroom setup per room type), not just one price for the whole property.
• Office hours, decoded. Whether a property's office is open right now and its full weekly schedule, not a raw encoded string.
• Vibes and neighbourhood tags. Qualitative descriptors (quiet, urban, coffee-food, parks and greenery) alongside the hard numbers.
• Complete in one pass. Reads Student.com's own property index, not a paginated search UI, so a full run doesn't depend on "Load More" behavior holding up.
• No API key, no login, no browser. Reads only what Student.com publishes.

How it compares

Checked directly against both other Student.com scrapers on Apify (their own declared output fields, not a guess):

Capability	This actor	parseforge/student-scraper	delectable_incubator (low-cost)
Price, address, coordinates	yes	yes	yes
Review rating and count	yes	no	no
Real review text and reviewer name	yes	no	no
Direct contact email	yes	no	no
Phone number	yes	no	no
Office hours (decoded)	yes	no	no
Room types / floorplan pricing	yes	some (room types only)	no
Amenities, vibes, neighbourhood tags	yes	amenities only	no
Property type filter	yes	no	no
University filter	yes	no	no
Wheelchair-accessible filter	yes	no	no
Declared dataset schema	yes	yes	no

Use cases

• Housing market research. Track pricing, amenities, and rating distribution by city or university.
• Lead generation for student housing vendors. A filtered list of properties with a contact email, by state, city, or price range.
• University housing offices. Compile off-campus options near a specific university, filtered by rating, wheelchair accessibility, or price.
• Relocation and study-abroad services. Build a shortlist of verified accommodation options for a specific city.
• Sentiment analysis. Real review text per property, not just an aggregate score.
• Competitive monitoring. Track a property manager's portfolio, pricing, and rating over time.

Quickstart

Search: properties in Austin, TX with a contact email and a rating of at least 4.

{ "mode": "search", "state": ["TX"], "city": "austin", "hasContactEmail": true, "minRating": 4, "maxItems": 100 }

Properties near a specific university, under a price cap:

{ "mode": "search", "university": "University of Texas", "priceMax": 1200, "maxItems": 200 }

Look up specific properties:

{ "mode": "lookup", "urls": ["https://www.student.com/us/tx/austin/p/aria-grand-knpomm"] }

Input reference

Field	Applies to	Description
maxItems	all	Ceiling on rows written.
mode	all	search or lookup.
state	search	Two-letter US state code(s), e.g. TX, FL.
city	search	City contains this text.
propertyName	search	Property name contains this text.
propertyType	search	Exact match against Student.com's own property type label(s), e.g. Apartment, PBSA.
university	search	Nearest university name or slug contains this text.
priceMin / priceMax	search	Monthly price range, USD.
minRating	search	Minimum average review rating (0-5).
minReviewCount	search	Minimum number of reviews on file.
wheelchairAccessibleOnly	search	Only properties flagged wheelchair accessible.
hasContactEmail	search	Only properties with a direct contact email on file.
hasPhone	search	Only properties with a phone number on file.
urls	lookup	Full Student.com property URLs.

Output reference (selected)

Field	Description
id / slug / name / property_type	Identity.
address / city / state / country / zip_code / latitude / longitude	Location.
university / university_slug / distance_to_university	Nearest university.
min_price / max_price / price_range / price_currency	Pricing.
rating / review_count / reviews / reviews_summary	Reviews.
wheelchair_accessible / accessibility	Accessibility.
pet_policy / parking_info	Policies, when Student.com has them on file.
office_hours	{ is_open_now, weekday_descriptions, next_close_time }, decoded.
phone_number / contact_email / website / google_maps_url	Contact.
room_types / room_options / floorplans	Room and pricing detail.
amenities / vibes / neighbourhood_tags	Descriptive tags.
images	{ url, image_type, caption }[].
property_summary	Curated description text, when Student.com has one.
is_published	Whether Student.com currently lists this property as published.
listing_url	The property's own page.
query / error	Set on an unresolved look-up row.
scraped_at	ISO 8601 collection timestamp.

Run via API and CLI

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/USERNAME~student-com-housing-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"lookup","urls":["https://www.student.com/us/tx/austin/p/aria-grand-knpomm"]}'

$apify call USERNAME/student-com-housing-scraper --input '{"mode":"search","state":["TX"],"hasContactEmail":true,"maxItems":500}'

Fetch results

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?token=<TOKEN>&clean=true&format=json"
curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?token=<TOKEN>&clean=true&format=csv"

Billing and limits

• Pay per result. Billed per property row written.
• No charge on failure. A run that produces zero rows fails with a message and is not billed.
• An unresolved look-up URL still writes one error: "not found" row and is billed as a base row.
• Free Apify plans run the built-in 10-row sample only.
• A very selective filter combination (e.g. a high minimum rating together with a contact-email requirement) may take longer to find enough matches, since it has to check more property pages before it collects the requested number.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Do I need an API key? No. Student.com's own property pages are public, with no key and no login.

Why did my run return zero rows? No property matched the filters. Loosen them, or check that the state/city spelling matches how Student.com lists it.

Why is contact_email, pet_policy, or parking_info null for some properties? Student.com itself doesn't have that field on file for every listing. This Actor reports null rather than guessing.

Are the reviews the property's complete review history? No. Student.com's own property page renders a fixed sample (5 reviews at the time of writing), not the full history. review_count is the total; reviews is that sample.

Why doesn't city always match the city in address? Student.com's own city field is what groups properties into its own market pages, and can occasionally differ from the city named in the street address (verified: about 1 in 4 properties in a sample pull) - this Actor reports Student.com's own city value as-is, so filtering by city stays consistent with what searching that same city on student.com itself returns.

How current is the data? Read live from Student.com's own pages on every run. It is not cached.

Is this an official Student.com tool? No. Independent, not affiliated with Student.com. It reads only data Student.com publishes.

Local development

bun install
bun test                       # offline: extraction, normalisation, input logic (real fixtures)
bun run src/main.ts            # reads storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json