StuRents in 2024: growth to support your business

2024 has been packed with highlights for StuRents. As the year draws to a close, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on how we’ve grown to support you over the past twelve months. 

Inaugural Occupancy Summit 

In June, we hosted our first-ever Occupancy Summit event at The Gherkin in London. As the first major conference StuRents has hosted, the Occupancy Summit brought together 150 delegates from over 100 operators, investors, lenders, developers, and banks to discuss current trends and opportunities in the student accommodation market.

The agenda was jam-packed with four panels, extensive networking opportunities, and, of course, plenty of exclusive insights drawn from our independent national Occupancy Survey data. As we head into the new year, we can’t wait to embark on the planning for an even bigger and better Occupancy Summit 2025!

Biggest-ever annual report launch 

This year, we published our biggest-ever Annual Report, featuring key contributions from the StuRents Intelligence team, UCAS, Moorfield Group, Fusion Group, JMW Solicitors, and KKR. Spanning over 60 pages, our Annual Student Accommodation Report 2024 covers everything from rental growth and PBSA leasing to the impact of BTR and the latest student search behaviour. 

Key takeaways include:

• Rental growth of 8.1% vs 5.3% (PBSA vs HMO)
• £158pppw vs £224pppw (average executed weekly rent, British vs Chinese)
• <£8pppw (remaining weekly loan after rent, England only)
• 91.7% (PBSA occupancy as of Sep-24)

Want to find out more? Access the full report today. 

Regular events and webinars 

In 2024, we continued to host our tried and tested roundtable events. These intimate networking opportunities offered our clients and partners the perfect forum for sharing their insights, concerns and questions about the student accommodation sector and property management - all while enjoying a delicious three-course meal. We've continued to receive positive feedback from attendees and look forward to creating more space for impactful conversations in 2025. 

We also continued our successful StuRents’ Quarters webinar series. Each Quarter, StuRents’ Head of Research, Richard Ward, is joined by industry leaders to discuss current trends and upcoming opportunities in the student accommodation market. 

We ended the year with our annual webinar, StuRents Insights: A Year in Review, which supported the launch of our biggest-ever annual report. We were delighted to see over 600 stakeholders from across the industry register for this online event. 

Richard Ward was joined by the other annual report contributors to discuss demand volatility in recruitment, demand profiles by demographic, how leasing velocity has shifted year-on-year, rental growth trends from the 2024-25 cycle, how the Renters’ Rights Bill could impact the student market, and much more. The session culminated in an informative Q&A session which allowed participants to explore the themes that matter to them most and get more in-depth insights from the panel. 

Concurrent development 

In 2023, we rebranded our StuRents Operations property management system to Concurrent. Since then, Concurrent has continued to evolve and expand, supporting Property Managers across the private residential sector.. Here are just a few of the key feature updates we’ve worked on this year:

• Centralising key communications. Users can now create a library of custom email templates within our Contact Centre and send automated emails based on different triggers to streamline and speed up essential communications with prospects, tenants, and guarantors.
• Offer 'no guarantor required' tenancies. In 2024, Concurrent integrated with Leap, allowing property managers to offer frictionless and affordable commercial guarantor services to tenants within the contract signing journey. This innovative product reduces signing friction with international students and other tenants unable to provide a UK guarantor, all while mitigating against the risk of tenant no-shows, rent arrears and early terminations.
• Simplify rent collection and reconciliation. Property managers can now adjust the amount tenants have to pay by adding rent credits directly to unpaid rent periods in the rents dashboard. When cancelling a tenancy, rent credits can write-off all or part of any outstanding rent instalment or record a refund if the tenant has overpaid.
• Cutting-edge referencing & credit checks. Our integrated referencing partner, Canopy, delves deeper into credit reports to surface any adverse credit history and provide insights into tenant suitability. Case notes and updates are now available in real-time from within Concurrent, supporting a more transparent and efficient referencing process.
• Streamline reporting on critical operational data. We’ve made several updates to Report Builder this year to help support accurate tracking and analysis of key data.
• The Rent Periods Report shows past, current and future rent instalments, payment information, and arrears where relevant.
• Assess daily occupancy records over time and make more informed decisions with the Room Occupancy report.
• Track the money held in Client Money accounts with the Settlements Report.

In the press

StuRents received notable press coverage in 2024 on both a national and industry level, with our proprietary data being featured in prominent publications including The Financial Times, The Telegraph, ITV, and The Times. 

Key members of our team also authored op-eds in 2024. Our Co-founder and Director, Michael Rainsford, shared his thoughts on why Labour must solve the university crisis if it is to deliver the economic growth it promised in The Standard. StuRents’ Head of Research, Richard Ward, discussed whether PBSA operators should be concerned about declining Chinese demand in Green Street News. StuRents’ Co-founder and Director, Tom Walker, presented at the Westminster Higher Education Forum policy conference about what The Renters’ Rights Bill could mean for student housing. 

What does 2025 have in store?

As we welcome in the new year, we're dedicated to supporting our customers' needs with unbiased sector insights and advanced property management solutions. 

Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the coming months.