How many students for how many beds? Managing supply and demand in UK student housing

The latest call for expanded purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) in the UK comes from the property consultancy Savills, which recently conducted an analysis of the 20 largest student cities across the country to better understand current supply-demand gaps.

All told, those cities contain 1.3 million full-time students but only half a million PBSA beds. "The balance between supply and demand in student markets is measured by the student to bed ratio – that is the number of students competing for each available bed offered by universities or private providers," writes UK Residential Research Analyst Corranne Wheeler. "A high student to bed ratio generally indicates a lack of supply…the ratio of full-time students to beds is 2.7 across these 20 markets."

The highest student-to-bed ratio is found in Glasgow (3.8), but four others have ratios above 3.0, including London And Bristol. In fact, only three cities in the Savills sample had ratios under 2.0. Against those benchmarks, Ms Wheeler suggests that a market norm, or target ratio, is 1.5. "At this level, students will have more available supply whilst not oversaturating the PBSA market; there will always be students who prefer [shared rentals] or living at home with family," she adds.

That suggests in turn that, at current enrolment levels, the 20 cities in the sample will need another 234,000 PBSA beds in order to approach that target ratio. London alone needs 100,000 of those beds.

The following chart illustrates the gap, by city, between current student-to-bed ratios and the projected ratio for each once PBSA beds currently in development become available. For purposes of the Savills analysis, the "short term pipeline" includes PBSA developments already underway or with construction approval as of February 2024.

For additional background, please see:

• ICEF Accommodation: The world’s first-ever agent networking event where providers of student accommodation and related services meet with international student recruitment professionals.
• "UK student housing crunch projected to worsen through 2026"
• "Continuing housing crunch opens the door to innovation and new strategies"
• "What if there is no room? The link between student housing and enrolment capacity"