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Average student weekly rent has increased by £4 from last year
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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