Going to college is supposed to give young people a chance to be away from home for a while but don’t tell that to these parents.

Leanne Italie of the Denver Post.

Extreme helicoptering: Now parents go with kids to college

Lori Osterberg and her husband are lifelong Denver folk, but they got restless and intended to relocate for adventure’s sake once their only child left home for college.

Well, long story short, they did that. Sort of.

Rather than following the sun down to Mexico, they followed their daughter to Portland, Oregon, where she is a sophomore. While still taking long weekends and other trips to Canada and California, the couple bought an apartment near campus that all three share.

“We’re calling it our gap year,” Osterberg said.

Sometimes scoffed at as the ultimate in helicopter parenting, Osterberg and others see only benefits in relocating or buying a second home to be close to their college kids.

Coldwell Banker, the real estate firm, first noticed parents making such moves in 2008 while compiling its annual College Home Price Comparison Index that ranked average home prices in more than 300 college towns. David Siroty, a company spokesman, said the index has not been done in several years but anecdotally agents continue to see it pop up in home rentals and sales around the country near campuses.

Regina Santore, a Coldwell agent in Knoxville, the East Tennessee home of the University of Tennessee, relocated a couple last summer from a town about 380 miles away on the western side of the state so their freshman could live with them.