Student Housing Research and Statistics

StuRents operates the market's leading Occupancy Survey, providing city and accommodation-type level insights in a range of markets with more than 120,000 beds from industry-leading operators already participating.

Due to real-term inflation increasing at a greater rate than predicted, students' finances are being stretched more than ever. For the 2022-23 academic year, the average maintenance loan is estimated to be the equivalent of £137.39 per week. Approximately 30% of student beds available in England (excluding London) are priced at £140 per person per week or higher, making them unaffordable by this comparison. By accommodation type, approximately 14% of HMO beds are priced above the average maintenance loan, versus 34% of PBSA beds.

StuRents' student property data insights leverage the unrivalled scale of StuRents.com's 750,000 PBSA & HMO beds listed, alongside aggregated and anonymised transaction data from the StuRents property management system. The result is market-leading insights into student housing trends that customers won't find anywhere else.

As of 2020-21, there were more than 2.1m full-time students in the UK, whilst a further 550,000 students were classified as part-time. Of those full-time students, 74% were from the UK, whereas 6% were from the EU and 20% were from the rest of the world. StuRents estimates that approximately 1.2m students were living in private accommodation for the 2020-21 academic year, with the balance living either in university halls or choosing to live at home.

We can provide a range of data insights in all ~100 UK towns and cities with a higher education presence and produce in-depth quarterly research reports in 46 UK & Ireland locations, such as Sheffield, Coventry, Glasgow, London and Dublin.

For the 2022-23 lettings cycle, the average cost of purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) was £183 per person per week (pppw). Meanwhile, the average cost of Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) was £116pppw. However, with the demand for student accommodation increasing, the cost of student accommodation will continue to rise at a national level.

At a national-level, there is an increasing trend towards undersupply of HMO and purpose built student accommodation in the UK, driven by a range of demand and supply factors. Critically however, every city or town with a higher education establishment has different fundamentals. Our leading data and insights help our clients understand and navigate these to make informed investment and operating decisions.

The pipeline for PBSA stands at more than 100,000 beds, with the majority of these developments put forward by private operators. Outside of London, Nottingham and Leeds have the largest pipelines, albeit numbers constantly change as new applications are submitted and approved.

StuRents is in its 16th year and over this period we have been fortunate to work with the majority of HMO and PBSA operators across the UK. Alongside this, prominent investors, developers and lenders rely on our data to inform their decision-making, but you don't need to take our word for it. You will find on this page a wide range of testimonials to give you a feel for our existing reach and the value we can provide you as a client.