Banks cool on student housing as fee hikes approach
Banks are curbing lending to the UK’s student housing property market as hikes in British university fees exacerbate grim conditions for real estate lending and leave the way open for new funding providers to enter the sector.
Obtaining loans from banks such as Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland has become more difficult in the last six months, several industry players told Reuters, forcing some developers to look elsewhere for backing.
‘We expect some cities, especially those with an over-concentration of student housing, and some universities to be hit by next year’s rise in tuition fees,’ Stewart Ward, head of the education sector at RBS Corporate and Institutional Banking, told Reuters …