Unite Students: Record demand for beds amid university housing shortages
Unite Students has reported strong growth and nearly-full student accommodation blocks amid record demand from students and still-constrained supply.
Unite told markets this morning that like-for-like rental growth was 8.2 per cent and occupancy was 97.5 per cent for the 2024/25 academic year.
The firm retained its guidance and said it expected rental growth to be 4-5 per cent for the 2025/2026 academic year.
“The outlook for the business is positive with strong student demand at a time of limited new supply and ongoing investment into our portfolio and platform,” Joe Lister, Unite Students Chief Executive Officer, said.
“We have made good progress with the delivery of our record development pipeline and deploying the proceeds of our recent capital raise. These projects will deliver much needed new student homes in some of the UK’s strongest university cities and help to ease wider housing shortages.”
The company said its development pipeline is “fully funded” and will see delivery of an additional 4,600 beds between 2025 and 2028 at a total cost of £913m.
‘Resilient’ demand from international students
Earlier this year, the UK removed visas for family members of students. The decision was widely expected to cause a headache for underfunded British universities who rely on higher international fees to pay bills.
But Unite said international demand has been “resilient” in the face of changes to the visa policy, and that acceptances for international undergraduates through UCAS was broadly flat year on year.
Postgraduate international demand, however, has been “negatively impacted”.
“We expect the visa change to most significantly impact lower-tariff institutions, particularly those with a high dependence on students from Nigeria and India,” Unite added.
Unite added that demand from domestic students has normalised after the “exceptional sales cycle” of 2023/2024, with undergraduate acceptances for UK 18-year-olds up three per cent year on year.