Rise in demand for UK luxury student accommodation
Rise in demand for UK luxury student accommodation
Slumming it is now an outmoded option when it comes to finding student accommodation in the UK
Many of today’s privileged students are prepared to cough up a little extra for luxurious, well-appointed accommodations or at least those with fewer sharers.
Student rental prices have mounted by 55.5 percent over the last 20 years, compared with 24 percent for non-student properties, according to a report by London-based agency Benham & Reeves Residential Lettings.
These movements are apparently keeping up with the evolving profile of the British student. As tuition fees soar to record levels and more student grants get cut, many students from lower-income households have opted out of higher education altogether and entered the workforce directly.
This leaves more affluent British students as well as an ever-greater influx of cashed-up international students.
“These groups simply aren’t prepared to live in traditional ‘student houses’ with 5 rooms to one toilet and a very basic kitchen,” Benham & Reeves Residential Lettings director Marc von Grundherr explained. “They want to continue to live at the same standard they have at home.”
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A three-bedroom apartment in London’s Mayfair area is reportedly being rented out to an American student for an astounding GBP5,250 (USD6,940) a week. With a monthly price tag of GBP21,000 (USD28,000), the unit is being touted as London’s most expensive student property.
Students are increasingly gunning for privacy, the firm also found, with many turning to private halls, studios, and one-bedroom apartments that command rents of GBP400 (USD530) per week. Some have no choice anyway; the government requires a licence of Houses in Multiple Occupation or those that are rented out to more than two unrelated or unmarried tenants.
“The television series ‘Fresh Meat‘ may have only recently gone off the air but the premise of six students sharing a run-down Victorian house already seems dated,” Grundherr said.
Meanwhile, parents of international students have discovered that assets they bought for their wards get a lucrative afterlife following graduation day. For 98.7 percent of Benham & Reeves’ clients who did this, the assets appreciate to a point where they cover the total cost of their children’s education by the time they leave Britain.
From 2013 to 2014, there were 310,000 international students in the UK, 67,500 of whom were attending universities in London.
Read next: Foreign students outbid young London professionals in luxury flat rentals
Source: Property Report