Student

The growing nationwide demand for Student Accommodation represents an excellent opportunity for investment – both private and corporate. The team at Comfortable Living has a track record of selecting prime locations at key university sites, all with attractive budgeted net yields – making developments an even better choice for buy to let or managed investment.

We work with our clients to deliver tailored accommodation on any type of site: greenfield or brownfield, redevelopment or refurbishment. And we can integrate any kind of student accommodation with mixed property developments including leisure, retail, commercial and residential elements.

Our developments provide students with everything they are looking for: quality, comfort, safety, security and affordability – along with excellent facilities including data connectivity.

Comfortable Living can take care of everything from design, planning and arrangement of funding through to construction. Through our facilities management partners we can also provide ongoing property management and maintenance. This can be tailored to exactly the level you require – incorporating tenancy recruitment and management, including managing the void risk, ongoing property maintenance with fast-response locally sourced problem fixing and full facility management services from security to catering and cleaning.

Comments on the Student Accommodation market

The Commercial Property sector as a whole has been hard hit by the economic downturn. However, the student accommodation sector has remained fairly robust. The demand for higher education outstrips supply, and so occupancy rates in student accommodation are unusually high, 100% occupancy is not uncommon. Because of the diversified and stable rental base (as opposed to single large commercial tenants), the sector has attracted considerable interest from pension funds and life companies.

Rents have increased year on year above inflation, providing capital upside on multiples. Higher grades requested by Universities plus a move to attract higher paying overseas students, means that better quality accommodation is increasing in demand and pushing up rents.

Yields according to CBRE for second tier regional accommodation range from 6.75% where a Nomination Agreement is in place with a university to 7.50% where the owner lets to the market directly.

Source: CBRE