Average weekly student rent 'up 17% in four years' » Housing » 24dash.com

The average weekly student rent in the UK is now £61.48, according to the latest research published today.

The figure is 1.5% higher than last year according to the stats from accommodationforstudents.com, which are based on over 44,000 properties in 76 cities across the UK.

Over the past four years the average student rent has risen 17%, from £52.44 in 2004.

London leads the way with an average weekly rent of £102.85, 67% above the UK average.

Moreover, it is generally more expensive to rent student accommodation in the south of the country. Middlesex, Cambridge, Guildford, Surrey, Exeter, Oxford and Brighton are all 20% or more costlier than the UK norm.

Two notable exceptions are Scotland and Ireland. St. Andrew’s, thanks, perhaps, to the attendance of Prince William, has an average student rent of £82.29, 34% above the UK average and the highest by far in Scotland.

Edinburgh and Glasgow are also above average, but only 14% by comparison, with average weekly rents of £70.26 and £70.08 respectively, the first time Edinburgh has been higher than Glasgow since the research began five years ago.

Dublin has been included for the first time. Not part of the UK but popular with students from here, rents are second only to London at £87.68 per week, 43% above average.

Belfast, by comparison, can offer inexpensive student accommodation, with average weekly rents being only £51.79, 16% below the rest of the UK.

Some traditional English redbrick universities: Liverpool (£50.52), Birmingham (£54.28), Manchester (£56.65), and Sheffield (£57.12) are still below the average UK weekly student rent (£61.48). However others, like Leeds (£62.03), Nottingham (£61.60), and Newcastle (£58.90) are reflecting their increasing student popularity via increasing rents.

All three have shown rent increases well over twice the UK average of 1.5% over the last year, Leeds going up by 6.5%.

Best value locations in terms of student rental accommodation are the less fashionable student towns like Crewe, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Wolverhampton and Bradford, with average weekly rents of between £40 and £45.

Accommodationforstudents.com has been conducting this research for over five years and some interesting trends can be seen. One has been the emergence of student ‘hotspots’ where rents have increased well above average.

Exeter, for instance, now has an average weekly student rent of £77.54, 26% above average, and higher even than Oxford. Yet five years ago average student rents in the city were only £58, 34% less. Rents in Loughborough have risen 28% in the last four years, from £52 per week to £66.81.

But the real current high-flyer in terms of student rents is Chester, where rents have gone up 14% in the last year alone, from £67.83 to £77.12, putting it firmly in the UK Top 10.

Although London is still the most expensive city by far, student rents have remained stable.

In comparison, the rest of the UK is catching up. In 2004, at £102 per week, the average student rent in London was 95% above the UK average of £53.44, nearly twice as much. Today, at £102.85, the weekly student rent in the capital is just 67% above the average of £61.48.

Simon Thompson, co-founder and director of Accommodation for Students, said: “Students are still accumulating large borrowings to subsidise their studies.

"The cost of accommodation is a critical factor in their choice of university. Now, with the current UK economic climate, the biggest factor affecting the student lettings market is the fact that mortgage rates have increased and 90-100% mortgages are no longer available.

"Because of this, young professionals are finding it increasingly difficult to get on the property ladder and many landlords are accordingly transferring previous student rented accommodation to professional letting, putting student rented accommodation under pressure, particularly in some cities.

"In the light of this, our league table of UK student rental prices is particularly useful in identifying those cities that remain competitive in terms of average rental values.”

Accommodation for Students has over 750,000 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 seven minutes.