Other university story: the frats at my uni had frat houses, physical biuldings, but sororities did not (circa 2000). The frats bought decades previous, when houses were affordable. The sororities of the time could not. There was an ancient rule that more than X unrelated females sharing an independant house constituted a brothel. That law was ancient history, but the sororities missed the oppertunity to purchase land near the university and, i believe, to this day operate without fixed houses.