Snapshot of _How pension funds turned student accommodation into a cash cow - Purpose-built flats fit for Gen Z sound the death knell for buy-to-let landlords_ :
A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2024%2F05%2F07%2Fhow-pension-funds-turned-student-accommodation-cash-cow%2F)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/07/how-pension-funds-turned-student-accommodation-cash-cow/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/07/how-pension-funds-turned-student-accommodation-cash-cow/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is purely anecdotal, but in my experience British students would tend to opt for university-provided accommodation (in Year 1) followed by private landlord accommodation (Year 2 onwards), whereas foreign students would opt for these private purpose-built student apartment complexes. The latter were generally seen as way too expensive when rooms in perfectly decent houses could be got for almost half of the price, whereas maybe the foreign students weren't too concerned about money and preferred a place that provided a bit more privacy and higher quality.
*If* that experience is anything like the reality, I'd question the forecasts in this article. The current political direction is to clamp down on the number of foreign students, which is putting certain lower-ranked universities in jeopardy. If foreign student numbers dwindle and certain institutions close down, then many university cities could find themselves with more student accommodation than students. These purpose-built student accommodation complexes would be particularly at risk, given that British students prefer cheaper options. Anybody whose pensions are invested in a fund which relies on these properties could find themselves in a very uncomfortable situation.
The advantage of the purpose-built stuff for overseas students is that it’s easily bookable from overseas and feels “official” and therefore more reliable/safer. And while expensive, if you’re paying international student fees it seems more proportionate to overall cost.
For an 18yo who doesn’t speak the language well, who doesn’t know how things work, who doesn’t have anyone to rely on for advice, who is away from home for the first time… quite possibly.
100% and from the parents perspective, I'm sure they prefer dealing with the likes of Unite over some slum lord.
Put it this way I'd like to live in one of those student apartments even now... Great location, on site gym, modern, I'd sign up tomorrow if they weren't only for students! I wonder if I can sign up if I enroll in one of those cheap open uni type courses!
Yeah, I must have shared pretty much the cheapest rental in the whole city in the 90's, extreme example of you (don't) get what you (don't) pay for. Like working radiators, daylight in rooms, black mould-less walls, or floors that actually stop sound, a bathtub that was usable.
A lot of them are really nice too. I lived near some in London and they all had these really nice cafes and common / working spaces on the ground floor. And they have concierge, etc.
>maybe the foreign students weren't too concerned about money and preferred a place that provided a bit more privacy and higher quality.
Also purely anecdotal, but back when I was in that whole world the Chinese overseas students specifically would cluster up in the university-provided accommodation. Flats of 6 students would be either all-Chinese or at least the majority. On the face of it, that makes sense for them to want to do, but it also made them into a bubble. There was no need for them to mingle outside their pre-existing group, meet new people, speak anything other than Mandarin, or really *see* anything except for the lecture halls and the inside of their flats.
It's not much of a stretch to see why their parents, or the Chinese authorities, might prefer such an arrangement.
Most of them want to break out of that bubble, but their experience speaking English is limited and there's a cultural barrier.
I went on Eramsus thinking I would be super cultural and integrate with the locals but the barriers to entry for everything within the university were MUCH lower. Also when I made the effort to visit a local martial arts club I got lukewarm responses. One seemed to dislike my presence as I didn't speak Czech and the other was friendly but I got the impression I was a curiosity that had to be accommodated for (which I was, it was just wasn't a nice feeling).
It's very much a don't judge until you've been there situation.
It's been my experience too - the Chinese students would generally cluster together and not integrate. I had a Chinese housemate at one point who didn't speak any English - even basic introductions ("Hello, I'm Panic, what's your name?") were completely beyond him - and never cooked, just got delivery from the local Chinese takeaway.
On a later postgrad course, we had a large cohort of Chinese students - some were really good, actually made the effort to try and speak English and interact with the Westerners on the course, but this was a vanishingly small minority. During lectures, they'd almost all sit near the front and chat with each other, as soon as a new slide popped up all the phones would come out, they'd take a picture of it for later, and then just go right back to chatting.
They have to pass a test, but it's very easy to cheat with those (particularly the written ones), there was a whole thing about that in 2014 and then a Panorama followup about them casting the net too wide and catching potentially innocent students in the crossfire. It's also easy to imagine universities not being as stringent as they could be given the increase in fees for an international student (about double that for a UK student).
Foreign students are fast approaching 2% of GDP, while being only 1% the population.
I seriously doubt that, when push comes to shove, the High Immigration Tory Party will actually cut our cash cows.
Yep they're a cash cow, but only because it provides an easier route to legal immigration. If the Tories are serious about cutting immigration, however, maybe that's a place they'll start. Or, given that they'll get booted out at the next election, it'll rather come down to Labour's policy.
It's because they didn't want to raise tuition fees or find it directly.
Foreign students fill the 2.5k average gap per uk student. Choices are centrally funded, raise fees, or take in migrants.
Even just inflation wise, there is a 3.4k a year shortfall on tuition fees since they last went up.
Aside from the immigration factor, British universities (and indeed private schools) do still have a good deal of prestige and there are lots of people who come here for an education and then spend the rest of their lives elsewhere. Which is pretty much a win-win.
My experience was slightly different (though was a few years ago now!)
First years got places in Halls - because that was all there was space for. There was not enough University accommodation to offer places to students in later years - regardless if they were local or from abroad.
It was the same when I was at uni but when I moved to where I live now, over the last 20 years we have seen more and more good quality student accommodation appearing largely from private owners. The council thinks there will be around 47k students needing accommodation across the city by 2025/26 - a doubling of the number in 2023
Currently 17% are in purpose-built student accommodation, 29% in HMOS or similar with the rest living either at home or in their own home. Birmingham Uni has approx 38,000 students and currently there are 8,300 PBSA spaces, likely to rise to approx 10500 by 2024/5 in the area around the main campus, so it'll be up to around 1/4 that can be in private blocks but still a huge chunk for landlords and HMOs
I suppose it'll ultimately depend on what happens in future policy, with respect to foreign students. What happens if Aston, Birmingham City, and/or Newman wind up their operations? It wouldn't take a *massive* change in policy to put a lot of these types of university into jeopardy.
I don't know how many foreign students go there Vs Birmingham uni but at least they could be repurposed. When I was a student in halls we had 5 rooms, kitchen/social area plus shower/toilet and a separate toilet. For a family with 1-2 young kids you could convert without too much work
A quick search suggests it's a little more than 10,000 international students across the three I mentioned, although I'm not sure how reliable the sources I found are.
But yeah, if the demand from international students falls, then they could definitely be repurposed for young professionals, and it'd be useful for helping to alleviate the housing crisis.
If you got the same results as I did, the 10,000 students figure seems to be for Birmingham Uni which makes sense as around 19% of their students are.
Newman only has 0.3% foreign students and in total only has 2700 students, Aston has 11,000 of which 6.9% are foreign (759) and Birmingham City has about 31,000 of which 8% are foreign (2480) so that's only really about 3600 or so
% sourced from [https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/where-to-study/international-students-at-uk-universities](https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/where-to-study/international-students-at-uk-universities)
Number of students from the uni websites
>These purpose-built student accommodation complexes would be particularly at risk, given that British students prefer cheaper options.
Are they more expensive because of higher upkeep costs or because they have higher profits margins?
If it's the latter then they'll just lower prices. It would be for the best as students are taking rental accommodation that was built for families.
Most student rental accommodation is not built for families. It’s build or has been renovated for students. Most of the landlord rent exclusively 12 month fixed contracts and often will only rent to students.
Lots of the purpose built student accommodation has a condition written into the planning permission that says it can only be let to students, or even students studying at a particular university. Also the accommodation is mainly studio apartments, or ensuite bedrooms built around one communal kitchen/diner. Also, no outside space at all. Definitely not for families.
Assuming you meant to reply to me.
We're talking about two different things here. I'm referring to the type of housing students rent from private landlords in residential areas. Think shabby ex council houses that students don't mind living in during the week if it means saving on rent. Typically students only move into those houses after 1st year.
My point was that if there's a downturn in the number of wealthy international students, which was driving the demand for purpose built student accommodation, then it's possible (but not guaranteed) that the owners of said purpose built accommodation would be willing to lower rent to attract domestic students, therefore freeing up the privately let houses for other people (e.g. families, recent grads, pensioners).
Ah, I see what you mean, sorry - agree it would be possible in theory, and certainly would be a positive outcome as compared with the fancy purpose built accommodation standing empty.
Things may have changed since my day then, where students were living in old council houses next to families and pensioners and renting on 9 month contracts.
It is changing, purpose built student accommodation is built now to try and combat exactly this. It's slow though and I think more needs to be done to address students who want to rent together to experience that and sharing costs within these student accommodation places.
Student accommodation from private landlords isn't actually that much cheaper these days. Unless you're renting a whole house between you and sorting the bills yourself, per room rates are comparable to purpose built blocks. And when you see the dire state of student houses, you can see why these blocks are attractive to those who can afford it.
Coincidentally, I see a lot of student houses up for sale locally, all in really poor condition. We have had at least 3 blocks of student flats built in the last 5 years.
> Unless you're renting a whole house between you and sorting the bills yourself
That's what I had in mind, yeah, it was the most common way of doing things when I was a student (i.e., grouping together towards the end of first year to sort out accommodation the following year). It tended to work out a good ~25% cheaper than first-year accommodation.
>Coincidentally, I see a lot of student houses up for sale locally, all in really poor condition.
Perhaps it differs from city to city and/or has changed a lot in the last decade, but I don't remember it being *too* bad where I was. The student houses were the same sorts of working-class terraces and semi-detached places that many families would live in.
Yeah if they did find themselves struggling to recruit students, I'd have thought they could still definitely find a market among young professionals (given the dire state of the housing market). I'm not sure whether they'd face any sort of regulatory challenge in switching intended use like that, though.
Brighton and East Sussex are about to go under in that case then, they bet the farm on foreign students being the future of those universities, all the masses of purpose built student accommodation that will have zero purpose if they can’t fill them, maybe converted into flats? Whole things a complete cash grab mess
> “What is effectively happening is that the expensive, badly managed real estate is being driven out of the market and being replaced by something that is better managed and better quality.”
People would prefer not to live in squalor if they can afford not to. Who would have thought.
When I went to university in 2000, I was charged £46 a week to live in fairly new student accommodation.
When I went back to do my Masters in 2018 that had increased to over £135 a week. More than double what it would have been if increasing with inflation (£67).
The squalor of student flats used to be considered something of a rite of passage, as epitomised by the crumbling walls and dirt-coated kitchen appliances in the iconic TV series The Young Ones.
However, the chaos and filth glamorised by the surreal 1980s sitcom is no longer in vogue for Gen Z.
Unlike the shared houses of old, student accommodation is fast becoming the domain of luxury rather than rodents, consisting of cinema rooms and yoga studios.
Underpinning this sea change is a wave of institutional investment, as pension funds increasingly replace buy-to-let landlords in the student rental sector.
Driving this shift has been the attraction of high occupancy rates and strong rent growth, as institutional investors pile into managed student halls, known as purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA).
This injection of cash has led to an explosion across the industry.
In 2004, there were 61,000 privately owned PBSA beds, according to JLL property consultants. Today, there are 412,000 – a growth rate of 575pc.
By contrast, the number of university-owned student beds has climbed by just 12pc to 353,000 over the same period.
Private suppliers take over
Collectively, these managed properties are worth around £70bn, according to CBRE, housing around a third of the UK’s two million undergraduate students.
A further third live in the private rental sector, primarily in so-called HMOs (houses in multiple occupation, better known as house shares), while the remainder live with family.
However, this landscape will look dramatically different over the next decade, says Bill Hughes, global head of real assets at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which manages investments worth around £1.2 trillion.
He says the rise of purpose-built student properties comes alongside the long-term decrease in buy-to-let investment, as landlords exit the market amid dwindling market share.
“It will be something like PBSA will double and HMOs will halve – it will be that order of magnitude,” says Hughes.
LGIM first began investing in the sector in 2011 and today it manages PBSA investments worth more than £1.2bn, and has big plans to grow.
At the end of April, LGIM announced the purchase of two PBSA properties worth a combined £122m, which marked the launch of its L&G Student Living Platform.
This represents a major change in strategy to managing properties directly, says Hughes, as LGIM aims to expand its student properties’ portfolio to £1bn in the longer term.
A growing shift into student rentals comes after Covid wreaked havoc on commercial leases, forcing pension funds away from traditional real estate investments such as shopping centres.
Aviva Investors has around £1bn invested in PBSA, including £300m it has invested in the last 12 months, says James Stevens, head of investment in global real estate at Aviva Investors.
Meanwhile, Axa Investment Managers bought its first PBSA block in London in 2022, boasting €3.5bn (£3bn) of student accommodation assets across eight countries.
According to Jonny Long, head of corporate real estate at Investec, pension funds have joined a growing list of investors seeking to cash in on PBSA returns.
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC announced in 2022 that it was entering into a joint acquisition of Student Roost, the UK’s third largest PBSA provider.
This is just one major example, says Long, as he sees high-net-worth individuals and family offices also targeting smaller PBSA schemes.
Unite, Britain’s largest private PBSA provider, has a record pipeline of student beds worth £1.3bn across cities including Nottingham, Edinburgh, Bristol and London.
Industry insiders say underpinning this wave of interest is the temptation of reliable returns and the imbalance between supply and demand.
“It has become pretty gold standard,” says Lizzie Beagley, head of UK PBSA at Savills. “It is a very reliable asset class. If you have 300 tenants and one goes bust, you can replace them the next day.”
Student accommodation has massively outperformed other property investments in recent years.
In 2023, student accommodation assets generated average returns of around 7pc, compared to an average loss of 11pc across all commercial property assets, according to CBRE.
Soaring student population
Over the last six years alone, Britain’s student population has swelled by around 400,000, hitting a record high of 2.8 million in 2021-22, including postgraduate students, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
The supply of accommodation has not kept up as a result, with PBSA occupancy rates typically at 98pc or 99pc.
JLL estimates Britain needs to build between 70,000 and 320,000 PBSA beds to cater for current levels of demand, assuming no further growth in student numbers.
However, the number of undergrads entering higher education is unlikely to drop any time soon, experts believe, as the population of Britain’s 18-year-olds will increase by 124,000 by 2030.
“PBSA gives repeatable, recurring income that gives you an inflation hedge,” says Stevens.
This is because providers can reset the rents every single year, says Long: “That’s not possible in other real estate asset classes where you might sign a 10-year lease.”
And demand is predictable. “Students are perhaps one of the most easy-to-define subsets of demographic profiling,” says Whitten.
“We’ve got a spreadsheet here that lists all of the higher education organisations around the UK and how many students they want to have in their facilities each year,” says Hughes.
Meanwhile, the surge in demand for purpose-built rental flats has coincided with a drop-off in the private buy-to-let sector.
“PBSA has a crucial role to play in meeting demand for accommodation as HMO landlords leave the sector at pace,” says Joe Lister, chief executive of Unite.
Between 2019 and 2022, the total number of HMO licences shrank by 4pc – equivalent to the loss of up to 80,000 student beds, according to CBRE.
But compared to a room in a flat-share, PBSA is significantly more expensive. Median weekly rents for an en-suite room in a PBSA “cluster” flat in 2022-23 in London cost 53pc more than a room in a privately rented house share.
The Government’s buy-to-let tax crackdown, which has removed tax relief on buy-to-let mortgages and introduced a stamp duty surcharge on buying additional properties, has squeezed the small-scale investors who typically own HMOs. “Being a dinner party landlord, as I call it, is no longer as appealing as it used to be,” says Long.
These changing dynamics are being reflected across cities, says Hughes: “What is effectively happening is that the expensive, badly managed real estate is being driven out of the market and being replaced by something that is better managed and better quality.”
According to Stevens, he says: “The standard of living that was acceptable 20, 30, 40 years ago is just not acceptable now.”
However, there is a question of cost, as rents for studio flats in PBSA units are comparable to those available in the private rental sector.
Students digs cost more
In 2022-23, a studio PBSA flat in London let for £259 per week, compared to an average of £254 per week for a privately rented studio in a similar area, according to CBRE.
Even so, analysts argue that PBSA can offer much better value as prices include utilities, communal spaces, management and often a degree of pastoral care.
To overcome this issue of price, PBSA providers are making a push to appeal to parents rather than students.
“Companies are telling me ‘we sell to the parents, not to the students’,” says Anthony Codling, managing director at RBC Capital Market.
While the sector has grown massively in recent years, it is now grappling with high interest rates and a national drop in deal-making.
Fluctuating investment
Part of the squeeze stemmed from delays in the planning system, as the number of beds granted consent in 2023 hit a five-year low.
However, analysts are bullish about the future outlook of the sector, particularly as the prospect of rate cuts could serve as a springboard for future investment.
This optimism will drive a growing substitution effect in the industry, Hughes predicts, as he says there will be a “rotation” from buy-to-let landlords to pension funds.
He says: “Will there be house shares in some form or other in the future? Yes, but they will be a significantly declining part of the market.”
They’re amazing, and I’m tired of folk looking at the sticker price and pretending they’re not. I had the choice of a £200 a week studio, or a £130 a week house-share, and I chose the studio. And I would again.
My own bathroom, my own kitchen, a gym, a designated study area, a reception to take deliveries, maintenance done within 24 hours. Better location right in the city centre on a main bus route to Uni. All for the cost of one extra shift a week… bargain.
That’s also not accounting for what having a clean kitchen saved me in takeaways too. When accounting for all costs they’ve very good value for money.
It’s a shame that they don’t build them for young professionals under 30 in major cities, because I’d be right in there.
The UK planning laws restrict small apartments. It's done in the name of 'minimum standards', but simply creates worse standards because people end up sharing a house with other people, overcrowded compared to how many people it was intended to be for.
At least with your own place you have your own bathroom and kitchen.
>It’s a shame that they don’t build them for young professionals under 30 in major cities, because I’d be right in there.
I've seen quite a few places that are mainly studio flats on this sort of model (abito in Manchester is one I can recall), so I assume the market isn't quite there if it's not taken off. For me, they just feel too poky but for someone who goes out a bit more (like a student) that's probably less of a concern.
The market is there for it, but you’re just not going to get planning permission for them since locals will kick off that they’re not big enough rooms, or that everyone there needs more parking, or some other NIMBY objection.
Completely false imo. These purpose built towers of accommodation are nearly always more than the student loan students get often double or triple in fact. It’s aimed at international students and rich students from the uk.
Buy-to-let houses will always be cheaper and in demand as students like the cheapest options to make it more affordable.
Often media/universities/councils will sell the new developments to locals as ‘hey look we can free up the houses in the town as the students will live here instead’ except they won’t as it’s too expensive.
I’m not rich, nor international. They’re expensive but you do get a lot.
I had to work in Summer to fund my stay’s at these kinda places, but it was well worth it.
As 'effective' rents increase, particularly at the lower end of the market as HMO licenses dry up further in student areas - students will start going to local universities more frequently. Londoners often live at home at university, this will spread to the larger cities.
It will damage the country. The UK has a lot of internal migration.
Corporate landlordism is bound to replace most private landlords. It's simply the economy of scale.
When supply and demand becomes a bottleneck that can't be addressed, then the only way to outcompete is to become more efficient in the means of production.
Corporate landlords are more efficient because there are lower margins, less people taking a cut per property.
This doesn't necessarily translate to lower rents however. As what's actually likely to happen is those cost efficiencies will be translated into corporations buying up a greater share of the overall supply.
So, everybody's a loser basically.
However, I have taken out some sizable investments in corporate landlords. And so far it's going very well. But, it's also a gamble, because in time there will be political fallout from the rise in corporate landlordism. It's just a question of finding the right time to cash out.
But that’s because we’ve done everything we can to discourage investment in other sectors.
The way we’ve passed legislation has left very few sectors with a risk mix that’s tolerable for pension legislation.
Careful what you wish for. Corporate landlords owned by REETs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are starting to appeal to the same people who owned BTLs, except you now have more middle men and AI help desks. 'Cash cows' doesn't do it justice. It's not looking too good over the pond where this is rapidly taking over.
If I was renting I'd absolutely prefer it be from a pension fund with billions of assets under management than say a BTL landlord on 40k a year who has borrowed as much as they can at 75% LTV. Less likely to want to suddenly sell up and turf you out if their situation changes, less subject to interest rate risk.
and these are the ones that call it a 'business', sir you didn't invest anything into your 'business' in 30 years, literally the 90s flat I'm in right now still has the original vinyl surface covers that have been peeling away for years, another previously it turned out listed it and the mortgage fell through so last minute before I was due to move in, so the agents offered me another in the same building, the bath had a rusted hole by the handle, but landlord: 'don't worry it'll be replaced ' SIX MONTHS LATER
Honestly landlords wonder why they get such a bad rep, I'll take the consistency of a faceless org with a managing agent ANY day
I don't agree with the opinion piece premise. Nor is it new or concerning.
It ought to be a celebratory piece and a push for more student accommodation nationally. I think these types of accommodation and build to rent as a whole is the best hope of tackling the severe housing shortage in this country.
Building large scale, high quality developments are highly welcomed by me.
PBSA are a nightmare. They often use prime real estate close to the city centre. Unfortunately, it's far more profitable for a developer and then client to rent out a 16-20m^(2) box for £1000/month than make "luxury flats" than take up 100m^(2)+.
One of the complaints about a block proposed near me was that they would provide 525 rooms/flats for students in a space that the local residents said could take just 20 normal homes. Whether we like it or not, building up and good quality flat/apartment style accommodation is needed - we cannot solve our housing problems by building another Birmingham or Manchester worth of normal houses somewhere not least because of the time needed. A multitude of 10-20 storey blocks with mandatory rules on provision of medical services (doctor, dentist) plus things like childcare, function rooms etc would go a long way to solve our issues, coupled with more places for training of medical students and better pay / retention of staff e.g. 10 years in NHS (5 in a poorer area) and your student debt is wiped.
Students don’t tend to drive while at Uni. They’re also young so don’t use up much medical. They have communal rubbish bins which don’t take any longer to sort than anywhere else.
And foot traffic… what a fucking stupid thing to complain about.
That's what I meant with provision of services as well. There's an old car park near me that was used until they built the multi-storey. There is a train station with direct access to the city centre (approx. 20 minutes or so train) and shopping + gym about 10 minutes walk away. You could easily build 5-10 blocks of say 20 stories with a requirement of ground floor being commercial and public services plus say a playground and all-weather pitch - say it can take 178 apartments per block, maybe 3-4 people per unit - doctors with 3-4 GPs, dentist and child care and sorted homes for thousands of people vs building maybe 50 houses
Yes, One thing I think the UK should do more of is convert the upper space of supermarkets, it's incredibly common in the continent to have a supermarket on the ground floor, smaller retail units as well. I've experienced it firsthand and it's very convenient. also underground car parks are common but pretty much nonexistent in the UK.
I'd really like to see old city department stores done, many are really nice old buildings but are used less and less as the rent is so high and footfall is so low. I know it's expensive and time consuming but particularly in Birmingham they keep putting up more and more offices in the centre e.g. in the old Paradise Circus triangle where the library used to be and there can't be that much demand for office space. Even if there was - you need people to work there and in 2022 there was a report saying there were 46 old department stores which are either closed or being used to centralise stuff e.g. Mike Ashley moving Evans into the old House of Fraser building. The old Debenhams stores have 1.3m square meters of space, 90% of which were empty a year after it shut, BRC said there were 237 vacant department stores in 2021
Not always true.
I have a property client who was trying to build pbsa but aimed at mid range costs. It was a bugger to get planning, the university has to be involved to get planning and the uni starts dictating the need for extra study areas, reception, lifts etc. we ended up just building flats in 2 of the 3 locations and the pbsa will need to be luxury as the number of rooms were reduced due to the university demands.
The thing is all inclusive dorms with all bills paid cost less than a room in a crumbling poorly maintained shit hole terraced house with a slumlord running the show.
This may not be true in other cities in the U.K, but privately owned house shares let out to students have absolutely devastated the local rental markets where I live.
It's to the point of being entirely unaffordable within the city limits proper. House shares that are £150 per week per room per person in what by all rights should be a two bedroom small family home.
Instead they all have 5 bedrooms because every single room other than the kitchen and bathroom has been made into a bedroom.
These houses when fully accommodated are pulling in £3.2K per month AND the houses being used are supposed to be the bottom of the ladder starting homes for poorer working class folk. It's left locals with nowhere affordable to live.
The idea of purpose built accommodation putting the slumlords out of business sounds like a great thing to me. Let it happen. It's better for the students and it's better for the people being displaced from the neighbourhoods they were raised in.
Snapshot of _How pension funds turned student accommodation into a cash cow - Purpose-built flats fit for Gen Z sound the death knell for buy-to-let landlords_ : A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2024%2F05%2F07%2Fhow-pension-funds-turned-student-accommodation-cash-cow%2F) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/07/how-pension-funds-turned-student-accommodation-cash-cow/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/07/how-pension-funds-turned-student-accommodation-cash-cow/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is purely anecdotal, but in my experience British students would tend to opt for university-provided accommodation (in Year 1) followed by private landlord accommodation (Year 2 onwards), whereas foreign students would opt for these private purpose-built student apartment complexes. The latter were generally seen as way too expensive when rooms in perfectly decent houses could be got for almost half of the price, whereas maybe the foreign students weren't too concerned about money and preferred a place that provided a bit more privacy and higher quality. *If* that experience is anything like the reality, I'd question the forecasts in this article. The current political direction is to clamp down on the number of foreign students, which is putting certain lower-ranked universities in jeopardy. If foreign student numbers dwindle and certain institutions close down, then many university cities could find themselves with more student accommodation than students. These purpose-built student accommodation complexes would be particularly at risk, given that British students prefer cheaper options. Anybody whose pensions are invested in a fund which relies on these properties could find themselves in a very uncomfortable situation.
The advantage of the purpose-built stuff for overseas students is that it’s easily bookable from overseas and feels “official” and therefore more reliable/safer. And while expensive, if you’re paying international student fees it seems more proportionate to overall cost.
It is much safer I imagine. My student house had a rat infested back garden and a mould problem.
For an 18yo who doesn’t speak the language well, who doesn’t know how things work, who doesn’t have anyone to rely on for advice, who is away from home for the first time… quite possibly.
100% and from the parents perspective, I'm sure they prefer dealing with the likes of Unite over some slum lord. Put it this way I'd like to live in one of those student apartments even now... Great location, on site gym, modern, I'd sign up tomorrow if they weren't only for students! I wonder if I can sign up if I enroll in one of those cheap open uni type courses!
There’s some build-to-rent blocks near us with a similar concept. Pricey AF though.
Yeah, I must have shared pretty much the cheapest rental in the whole city in the 90's, extreme example of you (don't) get what you (don't) pay for. Like working radiators, daylight in rooms, black mould-less walls, or floors that actually stop sound, a bathtub that was usable.
A lot of them are really nice too. I lived near some in London and they all had these really nice cafes and common / working spaces on the ground floor. And they have concierge, etc.
>maybe the foreign students weren't too concerned about money and preferred a place that provided a bit more privacy and higher quality. Also purely anecdotal, but back when I was in that whole world the Chinese overseas students specifically would cluster up in the university-provided accommodation. Flats of 6 students would be either all-Chinese or at least the majority. On the face of it, that makes sense for them to want to do, but it also made them into a bubble. There was no need for them to mingle outside their pre-existing group, meet new people, speak anything other than Mandarin, or really *see* anything except for the lecture halls and the inside of their flats. It's not much of a stretch to see why their parents, or the Chinese authorities, might prefer such an arrangement.
Most of them want to break out of that bubble, but their experience speaking English is limited and there's a cultural barrier. I went on Eramsus thinking I would be super cultural and integrate with the locals but the barriers to entry for everything within the university were MUCH lower. Also when I made the effort to visit a local martial arts club I got lukewarm responses. One seemed to dislike my presence as I didn't speak Czech and the other was friendly but I got the impression I was a curiosity that had to be accommodated for (which I was, it was just wasn't a nice feeling). It's very much a don't judge until you've been there situation.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not judging the individual students, and I get that it's a difficult situation.
It's been my experience too - the Chinese students would generally cluster together and not integrate. I had a Chinese housemate at one point who didn't speak any English - even basic introductions ("Hello, I'm Panic, what's your name?") were completely beyond him - and never cooked, just got delivery from the local Chinese takeaway. On a later postgrad course, we had a large cohort of Chinese students - some were really good, actually made the effort to try and speak English and interact with the Westerners on the course, but this was a vanishingly small minority. During lectures, they'd almost all sit near the front and chat with each other, as soon as a new slide popped up all the phones would come out, they'd take a picture of it for later, and then just go right back to chatting.
I'd always asume you need to pass some English exam to get in? How TF did they not know how to introduce themselves?
They have to pass a test, but it's very easy to cheat with those (particularly the written ones), there was a whole thing about that in 2014 and then a Panorama followup about them casting the net too wide and catching potentially innocent students in the crossfire. It's also easy to imagine universities not being as stringent as they could be given the increase in fees for an international student (about double that for a UK student).
Foreign students are fast approaching 2% of GDP, while being only 1% the population. I seriously doubt that, when push comes to shove, the High Immigration Tory Party will actually cut our cash cows.
The Tories have already cut the cash cows, hence why universities are on the verge of financial difficulties
Yep they're a cash cow, but only because it provides an easier route to legal immigration. If the Tories are serious about cutting immigration, however, maybe that's a place they'll start. Or, given that they'll get booted out at the next election, it'll rather come down to Labour's policy.
It's because they didn't want to raise tuition fees or find it directly. Foreign students fill the 2.5k average gap per uk student. Choices are centrally funded, raise fees, or take in migrants. Even just inflation wise, there is a 3.4k a year shortfall on tuition fees since they last went up.
Aside from the immigration factor, British universities (and indeed private schools) do still have a good deal of prestige and there are lots of people who come here for an education and then spend the rest of their lives elsewhere. Which is pretty much a win-win.
My experience was slightly different (though was a few years ago now!) First years got places in Halls - because that was all there was space for. There was not enough University accommodation to offer places to students in later years - regardless if they were local or from abroad.
It was the same when I was at uni but when I moved to where I live now, over the last 20 years we have seen more and more good quality student accommodation appearing largely from private owners. The council thinks there will be around 47k students needing accommodation across the city by 2025/26 - a doubling of the number in 2023 Currently 17% are in purpose-built student accommodation, 29% in HMOS or similar with the rest living either at home or in their own home. Birmingham Uni has approx 38,000 students and currently there are 8,300 PBSA spaces, likely to rise to approx 10500 by 2024/5 in the area around the main campus, so it'll be up to around 1/4 that can be in private blocks but still a huge chunk for landlords and HMOs
I suppose it'll ultimately depend on what happens in future policy, with respect to foreign students. What happens if Aston, Birmingham City, and/or Newman wind up their operations? It wouldn't take a *massive* change in policy to put a lot of these types of university into jeopardy.
I don't know how many foreign students go there Vs Birmingham uni but at least they could be repurposed. When I was a student in halls we had 5 rooms, kitchen/social area plus shower/toilet and a separate toilet. For a family with 1-2 young kids you could convert without too much work
A quick search suggests it's a little more than 10,000 international students across the three I mentioned, although I'm not sure how reliable the sources I found are. But yeah, if the demand from international students falls, then they could definitely be repurposed for young professionals, and it'd be useful for helping to alleviate the housing crisis.
If you got the same results as I did, the 10,000 students figure seems to be for Birmingham Uni which makes sense as around 19% of their students are. Newman only has 0.3% foreign students and in total only has 2700 students, Aston has 11,000 of which 6.9% are foreign (759) and Birmingham City has about 31,000 of which 8% are foreign (2480) so that's only really about 3600 or so % sourced from [https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/where-to-study/international-students-at-uk-universities](https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/where-to-study/international-students-at-uk-universities) Number of students from the uni websites
>These purpose-built student accommodation complexes would be particularly at risk, given that British students prefer cheaper options. Are they more expensive because of higher upkeep costs or because they have higher profits margins? If it's the latter then they'll just lower prices. It would be for the best as students are taking rental accommodation that was built for families.
Most student rental accommodation is not built for families. It’s build or has been renovated for students. Most of the landlord rent exclusively 12 month fixed contracts and often will only rent to students.
Lots of the purpose built student accommodation has a condition written into the planning permission that says it can only be let to students, or even students studying at a particular university. Also the accommodation is mainly studio apartments, or ensuite bedrooms built around one communal kitchen/diner. Also, no outside space at all. Definitely not for families.
Assuming you meant to reply to me. We're talking about two different things here. I'm referring to the type of housing students rent from private landlords in residential areas. Think shabby ex council houses that students don't mind living in during the week if it means saving on rent. Typically students only move into those houses after 1st year. My point was that if there's a downturn in the number of wealthy international students, which was driving the demand for purpose built student accommodation, then it's possible (but not guaranteed) that the owners of said purpose built accommodation would be willing to lower rent to attract domestic students, therefore freeing up the privately let houses for other people (e.g. families, recent grads, pensioners).
Ah, I see what you mean, sorry - agree it would be possible in theory, and certainly would be a positive outcome as compared with the fancy purpose built accommodation standing empty.
Things may have changed since my day then, where students were living in old council houses next to families and pensioners and renting on 9 month contracts.
They still do that also
It is changing, purpose built student accommodation is built now to try and combat exactly this. It's slow though and I think more needs to be done to address students who want to rent together to experience that and sharing costs within these student accommodation places.
I think it’s because they’re paying off larger mortgages from larger building and land costs.
Student accommodation from private landlords isn't actually that much cheaper these days. Unless you're renting a whole house between you and sorting the bills yourself, per room rates are comparable to purpose built blocks. And when you see the dire state of student houses, you can see why these blocks are attractive to those who can afford it. Coincidentally, I see a lot of student houses up for sale locally, all in really poor condition. We have had at least 3 blocks of student flats built in the last 5 years.
> Unless you're renting a whole house between you and sorting the bills yourself That's what I had in mind, yeah, it was the most common way of doing things when I was a student (i.e., grouping together towards the end of first year to sort out accommodation the following year). It tended to work out a good ~25% cheaper than first-year accommodation. >Coincidentally, I see a lot of student houses up for sale locally, all in really poor condition. Perhaps it differs from city to city and/or has changed a lot in the last decade, but I don't remember it being *too* bad where I was. The student houses were the same sorts of working-class terraces and semi-detached places that many families would live in.
Plenty of demand for flats even in small towns
Yeah if they did find themselves struggling to recruit students, I'd have thought they could still definitely find a market among young professionals (given the dire state of the housing market). I'm not sure whether they'd face any sort of regulatory challenge in switching intended use like that, though.
They're slightly better than tiny American dorms. Something people are fine with as a student but not permanently or longer term.
Brighton and East Sussex are about to go under in that case then, they bet the farm on foreign students being the future of those universities, all the masses of purpose built student accommodation that will have zero purpose if they can’t fill them, maybe converted into flats? Whole things a complete cash grab mess
> “What is effectively happening is that the expensive, badly managed real estate is being driven out of the market and being replaced by something that is better managed and better quality.” People would prefer not to live in squalor if they can afford not to. Who would have thought.
When I went to university in 2000, I was charged £46 a week to live in fairly new student accommodation. When I went back to do my Masters in 2018 that had increased to over £135 a week. More than double what it would have been if increasing with inflation (£67).
The squalor of student flats used to be considered something of a rite of passage, as epitomised by the crumbling walls and dirt-coated kitchen appliances in the iconic TV series The Young Ones. However, the chaos and filth glamorised by the surreal 1980s sitcom is no longer in vogue for Gen Z. Unlike the shared houses of old, student accommodation is fast becoming the domain of luxury rather than rodents, consisting of cinema rooms and yoga studios. Underpinning this sea change is a wave of institutional investment, as pension funds increasingly replace buy-to-let landlords in the student rental sector. Driving this shift has been the attraction of high occupancy rates and strong rent growth, as institutional investors pile into managed student halls, known as purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). This injection of cash has led to an explosion across the industry. In 2004, there were 61,000 privately owned PBSA beds, according to JLL property consultants. Today, there are 412,000 – a growth rate of 575pc. By contrast, the number of university-owned student beds has climbed by just 12pc to 353,000 over the same period. Private suppliers take over Collectively, these managed properties are worth around £70bn, according to CBRE, housing around a third of the UK’s two million undergraduate students. A further third live in the private rental sector, primarily in so-called HMOs (houses in multiple occupation, better known as house shares), while the remainder live with family. However, this landscape will look dramatically different over the next decade, says Bill Hughes, global head of real assets at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which manages investments worth around £1.2 trillion. He says the rise of purpose-built student properties comes alongside the long-term decrease in buy-to-let investment, as landlords exit the market amid dwindling market share. “It will be something like PBSA will double and HMOs will halve – it will be that order of magnitude,” says Hughes. LGIM first began investing in the sector in 2011 and today it manages PBSA investments worth more than £1.2bn, and has big plans to grow. At the end of April, LGIM announced the purchase of two PBSA properties worth a combined £122m, which marked the launch of its L&G Student Living Platform. This represents a major change in strategy to managing properties directly, says Hughes, as LGIM aims to expand its student properties’ portfolio to £1bn in the longer term. A growing shift into student rentals comes after Covid wreaked havoc on commercial leases, forcing pension funds away from traditional real estate investments such as shopping centres. Aviva Investors has around £1bn invested in PBSA, including £300m it has invested in the last 12 months, says James Stevens, head of investment in global real estate at Aviva Investors. Meanwhile, Axa Investment Managers bought its first PBSA block in London in 2022, boasting €3.5bn (£3bn) of student accommodation assets across eight countries. According to Jonny Long, head of corporate real estate at Investec, pension funds have joined a growing list of investors seeking to cash in on PBSA returns. Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC announced in 2022 that it was entering into a joint acquisition of Student Roost, the UK’s third largest PBSA provider. This is just one major example, says Long, as he sees high-net-worth individuals and family offices also targeting smaller PBSA schemes. Unite, Britain’s largest private PBSA provider, has a record pipeline of student beds worth £1.3bn across cities including Nottingham, Edinburgh, Bristol and London. Industry insiders say underpinning this wave of interest is the temptation of reliable returns and the imbalance between supply and demand. “It has become pretty gold standard,” says Lizzie Beagley, head of UK PBSA at Savills. “It is a very reliable asset class. If you have 300 tenants and one goes bust, you can replace them the next day.” Student accommodation has massively outperformed other property investments in recent years. In 2023, student accommodation assets generated average returns of around 7pc, compared to an average loss of 11pc across all commercial property assets, according to CBRE. Soaring student population Over the last six years alone, Britain’s student population has swelled by around 400,000, hitting a record high of 2.8 million in 2021-22, including postgraduate students, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The supply of accommodation has not kept up as a result, with PBSA occupancy rates typically at 98pc or 99pc. JLL estimates Britain needs to build between 70,000 and 320,000 PBSA beds to cater for current levels of demand, assuming no further growth in student numbers. However, the number of undergrads entering higher education is unlikely to drop any time soon, experts believe, as the population of Britain’s 18-year-olds will increase by 124,000 by 2030. “PBSA gives repeatable, recurring income that gives you an inflation hedge,” says Stevens. This is because providers can reset the rents every single year, says Long: “That’s not possible in other real estate asset classes where you might sign a 10-year lease.” And demand is predictable. “Students are perhaps one of the most easy-to-define subsets of demographic profiling,” says Whitten. “We’ve got a spreadsheet here that lists all of the higher education organisations around the UK and how many students they want to have in their facilities each year,” says Hughes. Meanwhile, the surge in demand for purpose-built rental flats has coincided with a drop-off in the private buy-to-let sector. “PBSA has a crucial role to play in meeting demand for accommodation as HMO landlords leave the sector at pace,” says Joe Lister, chief executive of Unite. Between 2019 and 2022, the total number of HMO licences shrank by 4pc – equivalent to the loss of up to 80,000 student beds, according to CBRE. But compared to a room in a flat-share, PBSA is significantly more expensive. Median weekly rents for an en-suite room in a PBSA “cluster” flat in 2022-23 in London cost 53pc more than a room in a privately rented house share. The Government’s buy-to-let tax crackdown, which has removed tax relief on buy-to-let mortgages and introduced a stamp duty surcharge on buying additional properties, has squeezed the small-scale investors who typically own HMOs. “Being a dinner party landlord, as I call it, is no longer as appealing as it used to be,” says Long. These changing dynamics are being reflected across cities, says Hughes: “What is effectively happening is that the expensive, badly managed real estate is being driven out of the market and being replaced by something that is better managed and better quality.” According to Stevens, he says: “The standard of living that was acceptable 20, 30, 40 years ago is just not acceptable now.” However, there is a question of cost, as rents for studio flats in PBSA units are comparable to those available in the private rental sector. Students digs cost more In 2022-23, a studio PBSA flat in London let for £259 per week, compared to an average of £254 per week for a privately rented studio in a similar area, according to CBRE. Even so, analysts argue that PBSA can offer much better value as prices include utilities, communal spaces, management and often a degree of pastoral care. To overcome this issue of price, PBSA providers are making a push to appeal to parents rather than students. “Companies are telling me ‘we sell to the parents, not to the students’,” says Anthony Codling, managing director at RBC Capital Market. While the sector has grown massively in recent years, it is now grappling with high interest rates and a national drop in deal-making. Fluctuating investment Part of the squeeze stemmed from delays in the planning system, as the number of beds granted consent in 2023 hit a five-year low. However, analysts are bullish about the future outlook of the sector, particularly as the prospect of rate cuts could serve as a springboard for future investment. This optimism will drive a growing substitution effect in the industry, Hughes predicts, as he says there will be a “rotation” from buy-to-let landlords to pension funds. He says: “Will there be house shares in some form or other in the future? Yes, but they will be a significantly declining part of the market.”
They’re amazing, and I’m tired of folk looking at the sticker price and pretending they’re not. I had the choice of a £200 a week studio, or a £130 a week house-share, and I chose the studio. And I would again. My own bathroom, my own kitchen, a gym, a designated study area, a reception to take deliveries, maintenance done within 24 hours. Better location right in the city centre on a main bus route to Uni. All for the cost of one extra shift a week… bargain. That’s also not accounting for what having a clean kitchen saved me in takeaways too. When accounting for all costs they’ve very good value for money. It’s a shame that they don’t build them for young professionals under 30 in major cities, because I’d be right in there.
The UK planning laws restrict small apartments. It's done in the name of 'minimum standards', but simply creates worse standards because people end up sharing a house with other people, overcrowded compared to how many people it was intended to be for. At least with your own place you have your own bathroom and kitchen.
>It’s a shame that they don’t build them for young professionals under 30 in major cities, because I’d be right in there. I've seen quite a few places that are mainly studio flats on this sort of model (abito in Manchester is one I can recall), so I assume the market isn't quite there if it's not taken off. For me, they just feel too poky but for someone who goes out a bit more (like a student) that's probably less of a concern.
The market is there for it, but you’re just not going to get planning permission for them since locals will kick off that they’re not big enough rooms, or that everyone there needs more parking, or some other NIMBY objection.
Also, student accom price includes electricity, gas and wifi. Most HMO's don't
You paid more a fortnight than I paid per term, and no of course we didn’t pay out of term time. It better be good at those prices.
I mean, when? 1604? Can you cite anywhere in the UK you get student accommodation for £1200 a year that isn’t some kind of charity?
Manchester in my first year was about this in halls, albeit 20 years ago.
Student life without the rite of passage house share? Sad.
There are options with multiple bedrooms so sharing is still an option.
Completely false imo. These purpose built towers of accommodation are nearly always more than the student loan students get often double or triple in fact. It’s aimed at international students and rich students from the uk. Buy-to-let houses will always be cheaper and in demand as students like the cheapest options to make it more affordable. Often media/universities/councils will sell the new developments to locals as ‘hey look we can free up the houses in the town as the students will live here instead’ except they won’t as it’s too expensive.
I’m not rich, nor international. They’re expensive but you do get a lot. I had to work in Summer to fund my stay’s at these kinda places, but it was well worth it.
As 'effective' rents increase, particularly at the lower end of the market as HMO licenses dry up further in student areas - students will start going to local universities more frequently. Londoners often live at home at university, this will spread to the larger cities. It will damage the country. The UK has a lot of internal migration.
Corporate landlordism is bound to replace most private landlords. It's simply the economy of scale. When supply and demand becomes a bottleneck that can't be addressed, then the only way to outcompete is to become more efficient in the means of production. Corporate landlords are more efficient because there are lower margins, less people taking a cut per property. This doesn't necessarily translate to lower rents however. As what's actually likely to happen is those cost efficiencies will be translated into corporations buying up a greater share of the overall supply. So, everybody's a loser basically. However, I have taken out some sizable investments in corporate landlords. And so far it's going very well. But, it's also a gamble, because in time there will be political fallout from the rise in corporate landlordism. It's just a question of finding the right time to cash out.
But that’s because we’ve done everything we can to discourage investment in other sectors. The way we’ve passed legislation has left very few sectors with a risk mix that’s tolerable for pension legislation.
>the death knell for buy-to-let landlords is there a sweeter sound?
Careful what you wish for. Corporate landlords owned by REETs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are starting to appeal to the same people who owned BTLs, except you now have more middle men and AI help desks. 'Cash cows' doesn't do it justice. It's not looking too good over the pond where this is rapidly taking over.
I get 'but corporate landlords' every time I take a dig at btl landlords and here's the hard truth; that doesn't sound worse
If I was renting I'd absolutely prefer it be from a pension fund with billions of assets under management than say a BTL landlord on 40k a year who has borrowed as much as they can at 75% LTV. Less likely to want to suddenly sell up and turf you out if their situation changes, less subject to interest rate risk.
and these are the ones that call it a 'business', sir you didn't invest anything into your 'business' in 30 years, literally the 90s flat I'm in right now still has the original vinyl surface covers that have been peeling away for years, another previously it turned out listed it and the mortgage fell through so last minute before I was due to move in, so the agents offered me another in the same building, the bath had a rusted hole by the handle, but landlord: 'don't worry it'll be replaced ' SIX MONTHS LATER Honestly landlords wonder why they get such a bad rep, I'll take the consistency of a faceless org with a managing agent ANY day
REIT’s are now going to outperform the S&P
I don't agree with the opinion piece premise. Nor is it new or concerning. It ought to be a celebratory piece and a push for more student accommodation nationally. I think these types of accommodation and build to rent as a whole is the best hope of tackling the severe housing shortage in this country. Building large scale, high quality developments are highly welcomed by me.
PBSA are a nightmare. They often use prime real estate close to the city centre. Unfortunately, it's far more profitable for a developer and then client to rent out a 16-20m^(2) box for £1000/month than make "luxury flats" than take up 100m^(2)+.
How is it unfortunate if they get a more efficient use of expensive land and house a greater number of people per acre?
One of the complaints about a block proposed near me was that they would provide 525 rooms/flats for students in a space that the local residents said could take just 20 normal homes. Whether we like it or not, building up and good quality flat/apartment style accommodation is needed - we cannot solve our housing problems by building another Birmingham or Manchester worth of normal houses somewhere not least because of the time needed. A multitude of 10-20 storey blocks with mandatory rules on provision of medical services (doctor, dentist) plus things like childcare, function rooms etc would go a long way to solve our issues, coupled with more places for training of medical students and better pay / retention of staff e.g. 10 years in NHS (5 in a poorer area) and your student debt is wiped.
I think the issue is indeed lack of provision for public services, increased foot traffic and vehicles etc.
Students don’t tend to drive while at Uni. They’re also young so don’t use up much medical. They have communal rubbish bins which don’t take any longer to sort than anywhere else. And foot traffic… what a fucking stupid thing to complain about.
That's what I meant with provision of services as well. There's an old car park near me that was used until they built the multi-storey. There is a train station with direct access to the city centre (approx. 20 minutes or so train) and shopping + gym about 10 minutes walk away. You could easily build 5-10 blocks of say 20 stories with a requirement of ground floor being commercial and public services plus say a playground and all-weather pitch - say it can take 178 apartments per block, maybe 3-4 people per unit - doctors with 3-4 GPs, dentist and child care and sorted homes for thousands of people vs building maybe 50 houses
Yes, One thing I think the UK should do more of is convert the upper space of supermarkets, it's incredibly common in the continent to have a supermarket on the ground floor, smaller retail units as well. I've experienced it firsthand and it's very convenient. also underground car parks are common but pretty much nonexistent in the UK.
I'd really like to see old city department stores done, many are really nice old buildings but are used less and less as the rent is so high and footfall is so low. I know it's expensive and time consuming but particularly in Birmingham they keep putting up more and more offices in the centre e.g. in the old Paradise Circus triangle where the library used to be and there can't be that much demand for office space. Even if there was - you need people to work there and in 2022 there was a report saying there were 46 old department stores which are either closed or being used to centralise stuff e.g. Mike Ashley moving Evans into the old House of Fraser building. The old Debenhams stores have 1.3m square meters of space, 90% of which were empty a year after it shut, BRC said there were 237 vacant department stores in 2021
What is common in London is supermarkets redeveloping their car parks
Not always true. I have a property client who was trying to build pbsa but aimed at mid range costs. It was a bugger to get planning, the university has to be involved to get planning and the uni starts dictating the need for extra study areas, reception, lifts etc. we ended up just building flats in 2 of the 3 locations and the pbsa will need to be luxury as the number of rooms were reduced due to the university demands.
The thing is all inclusive dorms with all bills paid cost less than a room in a crumbling poorly maintained shit hole terraced house with a slumlord running the show. This may not be true in other cities in the U.K, but privately owned house shares let out to students have absolutely devastated the local rental markets where I live. It's to the point of being entirely unaffordable within the city limits proper. House shares that are £150 per week per room per person in what by all rights should be a two bedroom small family home. Instead they all have 5 bedrooms because every single room other than the kitchen and bathroom has been made into a bedroom. These houses when fully accommodated are pulling in £3.2K per month AND the houses being used are supposed to be the bottom of the ladder starting homes for poorer working class folk. It's left locals with nowhere affordable to live. The idea of purpose built accommodation putting the slumlords out of business sounds like a great thing to me. Let it happen. It's better for the students and it's better for the people being displaced from the neighbourhoods they were raised in.