Quarterly webinar summary: student accommodation trends and market outlook in April 2025

StuRents’ Quarterly Webinar: Top Student Rental Sector Trends and Attendee Poll

The student rental sector is still undergoing significant change, with national regulatory changes, shifting supply and demand, plus economic and political pressures both nationally and globally. Our latest quarterly webinar explored some of these trends at both national and city levels.

While overall student applications grew overall this year and UK student acceptances are holding steady, there are some worrying trends as Non-EU acceptance rate has been slowly declining and OfS data shows a sharp drop off in international postgraduates. While higher tariff universities continue to perform well, middle and lower tariff universities are struggling to attract students.

Nationally, the PBSA market is undersupplied, however individual cities are telling different stories. Birmingham is performing well, while fundamentals shift negative in others, and oversupply in cities like Coventry continues to be a challenge. These trends are also reflected in our occupancy and leasing velocity data.

Key Trends in the Student Housing Sector

As covered at the start of our most recent quarterly webinar, UCAS released both January deadline application data for the 2025-26 academic year, as well as end-of-cycle data covering up to the end of 2024.

Looking at the January deadline data, total applicants are up, mainly driven by Non-EU growth of 3.1%. While the application rate for UK 18-year-olds has been declining since 2022, China is still showing strong growth along with the USA and Turkey. Unsurprisingly, higher tariff universities are still performing well, with medium and lower tariff universities both declining this year.

Chart 1: Applicants by country, 2013-2025

Source: UCAS

Despite positive application numbers, the UCAS end-of-cycle data is showing that Non-EU acceptances are declining - matching anecdotal evidence that international students are applying to a wider range of universities but less frequently choosing the UK. For individual cities, some such as Birmingham are showing strong continued growth, while others, such as Leicester, have sharply declined in the last academic year despite stronger historic growth. The latest Office for Students data shows a worrying trend also: a large decline in overseas postgraduates in 2024 of just over 17% year-on-year.

Chart 2: Application acceptance rate for UK and Non-EU, 2015-2024

Source: UCAS

Chart 3: Overseas student numbers, 2018-2024

Source: OfS

Moving to the StuRents’ occupancy data, derived from our occupancy survey, studio leasing velocity is down nationally compared to previous years. Clusters are also down nationally, although these typically let more slowly than studios.

For students searching on the StuRents platform, demand shifted to larger sizes in Q1 2025, with 83% of searches for 3 beds or more compared to a preference for studios in the previous quarter. Looking at data from our Concurrent PMS platform on signed tenancies, it’s clear that Chinese students continue to execute contracts well above British students; this margin had widened to more than £60pppw by the end of 2024. However, it’s worth noting that while £pppw is important to consider, the total contract value (by including tenancy length) is necessary to evaluate overall revenue differences.

Chart 4: Weekly rent on executed contracts, 2020-2024

Source: StuRents, Concurrent

UK planning activity was heavily affected by the pandemic with recovery, at a national level, starting in the last two years. While slightly fewer beds were submitted in 2024 compared to 2023, approvals are up almost 30%, indicating some continued post-Covid recovery. London still leads the way for approvals in 2024, although locations such as Glasgow are also highly active.

Looking at fundamentals, there continues to be large local variations that are hidden by national aggregation. As a whole, the UK is undersupplied with PBSA, with some locations - including Coventry - that continue to be challenging, while others such as Birmingham that currently indicate strong fundamentals. These trends are reinforced in local occupancy data, and further supported when tracking room pricing over time in these locations.

Chart 5: Forecast supply and demand for Birmingham, 2017-2028

Source: StuRents

Quarterly Webinar Attendee Poll

The first question posed to attendees was their expectation for rental growth in the 2025-26 period. Most respondents believed that there would be 3-4% growth, with 22% taking a more reserved view at 1-2%. Only 4% of attendees indicated an expectation of 7% or more. Compared to responses from our annual webinar in November of last year, views are now more optimistic, with a 6 percentage point increase in people who are expecting 5-6% growth.

Chart 6: Split of responses for rental market growth in 2025-2026

Source: StuRents' Quarterly Webinar

Looking at international demand, we then asked attendees about their expectations compared to last year. The majority expected demand to be neutral, with 35% believing there will be positive growth. Comparing again to the annual webinar results from the end of last year there was a negative shift in outlook, with a 9 percentage point decrease in neutral responses and 8 percentage point increase in negative expectation.

Chart 7: Split of responses for international student demand in 2025-2026

Source: StuRents' Quarterly Webinar

Finally, we asked attendees how their view towards the student accommodation market has shifted in the last 3 months. Almost half indicated that it was unchanged, with 32% taking a more pessimistic view. This is relatively close to the results obtained from the 2024 annual webinar, with slight decreases in positive outlook.

Chart 8: Split of responses for student accommodation market outlook in 2025-2026

Source: StuRents' Quarterly Webinar

Taking an aggregated view of all answers provided (by assigning numerical values to optimistic, neutral and pessimistic responses), there was an overall pessimistic sentiment to the student accommodation market, with over 58% of attendees indicating negative or pessimistic sentiment across all three questions. Again, the results obtained here closely match those received in the 2024 annual webinar, indicating that views on the student accommodation may have been largely unaffected in the past quarter.

Chart 9: Split of sentiment for student market outlook in 2025-2026

Source: StuRents' Quarterly Webinar

The student rental market is undergoing substantial changes influenced by demographic, economic, political, and regulatory factors. Although uncertainties persist, those who can adapt to these shifts will find opportunities in the evolving landscape of student accommodation; staying informed and responsive to emerging trends will be essential.

For more information about our proprietary, highly granular data covering UK student accommodation contact the StuRents Research team today. Or book a demo of our Data Portal to find out how you can have up-to-the-minute university housing insights at your fingertips.