British students forced to overpay on rent
Image courtesy of Adobe
The Telegraph reports that British students are being forced to pay thousands of pounds more for university accommodation as landlords write contracts to appeal to wealthier international students.
According to research from StuRents, studio apartments now make up nearly half of all purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) in developers' pipelines in the UK. Two-thirds of PBSA housing is now offered on a one-year contract, which can cause students who only need to rent during university term time to pay an additional £2,000 a year in some cities.
According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the number of non-EU students has grown by 6.7% in the last decade while the number of domestic students has only increased by 1.6%. International students now make up 25% of full-time students.
Alistair Kemp from Savills tells The Telegraph that this growth in international students has 'led to a reliance on international students to "supercharge" property investment growth'.
The number of year-long lets has increased across most Russell Group cities in the past five years. These lets cater to students who don't go home during the university holidays.
According to data from Cushman & Wakefield, in Bristol, one of the UK's most expensive university cities, the average rent is £208.86 per week. The difference between a 41-week contract and a 51-week contract is therefore over £2,000.
The number of studios in the development pipeline is also increasing. Studios made up 67% of developers' pipelines between October and December in 2023, compared with 51% in the same quarter in 2022.
On average, excluding London, students pay £164 per week for a room in a cluster and £234 per week for a studio. That adds up to a difference of £3,570 over the course of a year.
In the HMO market, there has also been a shift towards landlords offering longer contracts to meet demand from international and postgraduate students. Richard Townsend, a consultant at Cushman & Wakefield's student accommodation advisory, says that 'the uptick can also be attributed to the increased prevalence of studio apartments, which are typically let on 51-week terms.'
On average, 51-week lets now cost UK students around £8,400 while the average maintenance loan is just £5,952.
Tom Walker, co-founder and managing director of StuRents, said the Government's decision to raise maintenance loans for 2024-25 by 2.5% 'offers little comfort' to students.
He states, 'In many university cities, a shortage of affordable accommodation has driven rents - by far the biggest expenditure in a student budget - to unprecedented levels, currently up 8.4% compared to last year. With so many students dependent on their maintenance loan to service their rent payments, we are clearly on an unsustainable path that threatens to price many students from lower and middle-income backgrounds out of higher education.'
Share
Article by
Copywriter & Content Marketing Executive at StuRents
Honor is a Copywriter & Content Marketing Executive, working within the Marketing team to create content for StuRents.
