Average weekly student rent increases to £60 » Housing » 24dash.com

The average weekly rent for a student in the UK has increased to £60, 7% higher than last year's figure of £56, Accommodation for Students reports.

The student accommodation website has published its latest research into the nationwide cost of rented student accommodation based on 37,000 properties in over 60 university locations across the UK.
 
It shows that rents vary dramatically. London is the most expensive place to study, with an average weekly rent of £102, 71% above average.

Top university cities, Cambridge and Oxford, have rents of £84 and £79 per week, 42% and 32% above average respectively, followed by a host of south-eastern and southern university locations: Guildford, Exeter, Brighton, Kent (Canterbury), Eastbourne, Bristol and Bath (see full league table below).

Some Scottish university cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh are also more expensive to live in, with rents of £70 and £68 per week, 17% and 15% above average.

However, the most expensive university location in Scotland is St Andrews with an average rent of £82 per week, 38% above average and on a par with Oxbridge.

The traditional English redbrick universities: Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle and Leeds are all below average for student rentals.

Best value locations in terms of student rental accommodation are the less fashionable student towns like Crewe, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Wolverhampton, Bradford and Sunderland, with average weekly rents of £37, £38, £40, ££42, £43 and £44 respectively.

By and large most university locations show an average rent consistent with last year but there are two big movers.

The average weekly rent in Durham has shot up from £50 last year, 10% below the UK average, to £67 this year, 12% above average, and Loughborough has risen from £52 last year, 7% below average, to £65 this year, 10% above average.

Simon Thompson, co-founder and director of Accommodation for Students, said: "Now that students are accumulating large borrowings to subsidise their study the cost of accommodation has become a critical factor in their choice of university and our UK-wide league table for rents is a valuable tool for new students in assessing their university options.

"Although southern universities are still more expensive for accommodation, with London way out front, some increasingly popular university locations have seen a corresponding rise in rents: Durham, Warwick and Loughborough are three good examples."

Accommodation for Students has over 400,000 registered students. It is top of the UK search engines and receives over 475,000 visitors per month, with an average site visit time of over 7 minutes.

UK Student Rent Analysis, March 2007 (65 cities/37,112 properties):

City
 Average Rent (£)
 Index*
 
London
 102.11
 171
 
Cambridge
 84.36
 142
 
Guildford
 83.18
 140
 
St Andrews
 81.96
 138
 
Oxford
 78.72
 132
 
Exeter
 75.97
 128
 
Brighton
 72.35
 121
 
Kent
 72.33
 121
 
Canterbury
 70.47
 118
 
Glasgow
 69.50
 117
 
Eastbourne
 68.89
 116
 
Bristol
 68.67
 115
 
Bath
 68.50
 115
 
Edinburgh
 68.39
 115
 
Chester
 67.68
 114
 
Chichester
 67.31
 113
 
Bournemouth
 67.07
 113
 
Durham
 66.97
 112
 
Warwick
 66.67
 112
 
Winchester
 65.74
 110
 
Reading
 65.43
 110
 
Loughborough
 65.33
 110
 
Colchester
 63.27
 106
 
Plymouth
 60.38
 101
 
Lincoln
 59.64
 100
 
Luton
 59.52
 100
 
Southampton
 59.38
 100
 
York
 59.22
 99
 
Nottingham
 59.09
 99
 
Devon
 58.46
 98
 
Leeds
 58.01
 97
 
Portsmouth
 57.62
 97
 
Aberdeen
 56.47
 95
 
Norwich
 56.41
 95
 
Newcastle
 56.40
 95
 
Sheffield
 56.17
 94
 
Swansea
 55.74
 94
 
Stafford
 55.66
 93
 
Cheltenham
 54.95
 92
 
Cardiff
 54.87
 92
 
Manchester
 54.72
 92
 
Birmingham
 53.67
 90
 
Huddersfield
 53.27
 89
 
Dundee
 53.20
 89
 
Leicester
 52.11
 87
 
Northampton
 51.97
 87
 
Derby
 51.82
 87
 
Preston
 50.61
 85
 
Lancaster
 50.16
 84
 
Bolton
 50.15
 84
 
Blackpool
 50.13
 84
 
Coventry
 49.46
 83
 
Bangor
 49.07
 82
 
Liverpool
 48.14
 81
 
Salford
 47.86
 80
 
Carlisle
 47.08
 79
 
Hull
 46.82
 79
 
Pontypridd
 46.64
 78
 
Belfast
 45.30
 76
 
Sunderland
 44.45
 75
 
Bradford
 43.21
 73
 
Wolverhampton
 42.35
 71
 
Stoke
 40.25
 68
 
Middlesbrough
 37.85
 64
 
Crewe
 37.22
 62
 
UK Average Rent
 59.56
 100
 
* Index compared to average UK student rental cost of £59.56

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