Did you know that there is a vast shortage all over the UK of student accommodation? Every major city has a university, some more than one and where there is a university you will find students and all those students throughout their periods of study, need greenwich student accommodation.
It is estimated that only fifty percent of all students in the UK have access to high-quality and specifically purpose-built student accommodation. When you look at high dense population areas, it’s expected that this figure declines to even less, somewhere in the region of just twenty percent. This massive shortage means a wonderful investment opportunity is available to any savvy investor.
Doing the maths, it looks like there are almost a hundred thousand students alone in the London area that have a high demand for accommodation and that demand is only ever going to rise! Student property really needs to be conveniently located and by that, we mean close to good areas for socializing and on good public transport links to the university campus. Tick those essential boxes and you will have students knocking down your door in a rush to rent from you.
I appreciate this might sound too good to be true but dense populations spring up in inner city areas that quickly become known as student zones. While this may put off traditional private sales and in some cases cut pricing of private sales of property, for the specific student property expert, this is a perfect situation where you will be able to maximise your return on investment in very quick time. Some good examples of UK locations include Brighton, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburg, Exeter and needless to say London.
If accommodation is purpose-built for students then the quality of student is higher, this means the rental returns are higher and you can also attract overseas students, many of which will not have the budget limitations facing local students. Think of purpose built student accommodation mimicking smaller halls of residence. For this you need ideally a larger property that can be split into studio style rental apartments numbering four or five. If you can get such a property close to or next to the University campus then this will strengthen the purpose built approach and really boarder your student market appeal.
Students are reliable, they rent for set periods of time, and you get plenty of notice of the tenancy ending and can literally replace those tenants with the next student intake. All you need to do is make sure you are ahead of the student calendar and make use of current tenant’s recommendations, word of mouth advertising or post notices within University campus areas or on the host of student accommodation websites. It is unlikely you will ever be short of a hungry demographic.
The UK has always attracted a broad spectrum of investors, but due to the increase of students looking to rent temporary accommodation, there has also been an increase in student property investors. They are essentially buy-to-let investors with a keen focus on the student market.
The UK also offers property investors a strong and consistent annual yield. The property value in the UK can grow much over the years. This mainly due to the active market, high demand and limited amount of land to develop property on.