Tag: Student Apartments

Empiric Student Property has bought three student properties in Bath, with a combined 107 beds, for £9.2m.

Canal Bridge, Widcombe Wharf and Piccadilly Place will be acquired from the developer Iesis Group which will continue to manage the buildings on behalf of Empiric. The properties are fully let for the 2015/16 academic year.

The two companies have previously agreed a deal on a student accommodation development on James Street West.

The latest acquisition takes the total value of property acquired by Empiric from Iesis Group in Bath to £16.9m.

Paul Hadaway, chief executive of Empiric Student Property, said: “”The acquisition of this portfolio is the Group’s third investment in Bath and on completion of Empiric’s two assets currently under development, will result in Empiric owning a total of 354 operating beds in this attractive student city at the start of the 2016/17 academic year.

This acquisition represents an excellent investment opportunity in a city with limited purpose-built student accommodation and restrictive planning for new developments …

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An application which would see up to 500 new student bedspaces created on Brayford Marina has been submitted to City of Lincoln Council.

The University of Lincoln is expanding year-on-year, and has applied for the erection of 48 apartments across three new buildings on the site to cater for the additional influx of students.

In addition to the student apartments, 220 square metres of commercial space would be created, which could be used for businesses, as shops, a restaurant or cafe, or for further accommodation.

Commercial space in the region of 86 square metres would be put aside for the Brayford Trust as part of the proposed development on the site currently used as a car park.

An existing two-storey building on Campus Way would be demolished to make way for the new apartments and an enhanced public walkway would be constructed around the edge of the Brayford Pool …

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Plans to demolish a shopping centre in Newcastle and replace it with a hotel, student accommodation and retail space have been approved. The £70m project is now expected to support almost 1,000 jobs.

Newgate Shopping Centre dates back to the 1960s and comprises a nine-storey hotel building set back from the building line of Newgate Street and two-storey elements which flank either side of the hotel.

The application approved by Newcastle City Council is to demolish all of the existing buildings and build two in their place.

The first will be four to nine-storeys of student accommodation with retail and/or leisure space. A total of 575 rooms will be built on the upper floors with the ground floor housing the retail aspect ..

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“MULTI-MILLION pound plans to build 500 student flats in the heart of the city have been unveiled.

Developer Student Castle wants to construct the flats on the Oxpens site, with hopes of moving the first students into the new homes within two years.

It comes as part of the multi-million pound regeneration of Oxpens, which was agreed by Oxford City Council in November 2013, and envisages a boulevard along Oxpens Road, public spaces in the new development, and a mix of residential and commercial buildings.

Edward Cade, chief executive of Student Castle, said: “The council has identified the Oxpens site as a key regeneration site within the city and our site is considered suitable for student accommodation.

We are very excited to be developing in Oxford on such a key site and are working with other stakeholders to deliver our scheme …

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Manchester-based student housing specialist Crosslane is planning to expand its German holdings to 10,000 units over the next five years from 500 after identifying a favourable environment for the asset class in the nation …

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“Proposals for even more student accommodation in Selly Oak look set to be given the green light by city planners next week.

MAS Architecture and Avaro (Midlands) have submitted plans to demolish 778 – 800 Bristol Road and build 100 bedrooms and four ground floor retail units in a four-storey building.

The project has been recommended for approval by officers ahead of Birmingham City Council’s planning committee meeting on October 30.

A previous application for the site, which is close to the University of Birmingham’s main campus, was submitted in 2010 to build five retail units, 52 apartments, an office, laundry and cycle storage.

It is one of two applications for student accommodation schemes in Selly Oak recently submitted to the city council.

New vehicle Elliott Road Developments is hoping to build 123 studios and 206 bedrooms on derelict land in nearby Elliott Road.

A report produced for the planning committee meeting said: With the exception of 800 Bristol Road, the current parade of shops making up the application site are wholly vacant and in a very poor state of repair …

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Many of us who went to further education establishments in the UK 20 or 30 years ago will not be able to comprehend the enormous change which has taken place in the sector. We have seen massive investment by governments which has created enormous demand for further education places and seeded a very lucrative student property sector.

While this market continues to develop it is something new from many property investors. The statistics add up, the future potential is enormous and it is not difficult to see why over £2 billion was invested in this particular area during 2013.
Rental yields

Student accommodation nowadays tends to revolve around individual living quarters with a variety of shared communal areas. This allows for relatively high occupancy per square foot, increasing rental income, while offering an array of services to tenants. Indeed statistics show that the average yield on student property is around 5% to 6% higher than that available in the traditional buy to let market. We are looking at double-digit rental yields and due to the ever constant flow of domestic and overseas students demand is likely to grow in the longer term.
Statistics from 2014 confirm ever-growing demand for both regional and London based properties with rental growth of 2.75% and 3.00% respectively. Even though overseas students are playing a greater role in this particular area there has also been a significant increase in the number of “mature students” from within the UK.

Even the merest of glimpses at some of the world’s top universities will highlight the fact that the UK is very prominent in this area. This has created enormous demand in particular from overseas students with in excess of 60,000 university places made available during the financial year 2014/15. It is sometimes difficult to appreciate the quality of further education available in the UK especially when the domestic media tends to focus on negative developments and funding issues.

The proof very much seems to be in the pudding and compared to overseas counterparts the UK further education system seems to be more than holding its own.

Is traditional student house sharing finished? …

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Empiric Student Property has raised £86.4m, gross, through a placing and offer for subscription.

The issue, which was significantly oversubscribed, comprises the final tranche of the share issuance programme under which 300 million Shares will have been issued, raising gross proceeds of £312.0 million over the last 12 months. The net proceeds will be used to invest in the company’s pipeline of high quality, purpose-built student accommodation assets comprising a mix of operating properties and properties under development across multiple locations in the UK …

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Controversial plans for a £20m student accommodation complex on the site of a former Southampton bus depot could be approved by the city council next week.

Orchard Homes is seeking permission to construct 260 purpose-build flats on the site of the former Portswood Bus Depot at the junction of Portswood Road and Belmont Road. The three buildings would range in size between three and six storeys and a “”significant number”” of the flats would be occupied by postgraduate students.

The developer, which revealed its proposals for the site earlier this year, has previously said the buildings would be no higher than the neighbouring Sainsbury’s supermarket.

The plans have attracted more than 30 representations expressing concern about the scheme, according to a report set to go before Southampton City Council’s planning committee meeting on 27 October.

But planning officers, which said the proposed development would bring a long-term vacant, previously developed site back into active use, have recommended that the scheme be granted conditional approval ..

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“It all comes down to the bedroom. At least, that is the view from students in the UK, who rated having a big bedroom and a double bed the ‘must haves’ when it comes to finding the perfect student pad. That’s according to research released today from Uniplaces, following a poll conducted by Opinium throughout the UK, France, Spain and Italy on attitudes towards student accommodation.

Aside from having palatial bedroom, today’s students also demand mod cons and technology. Having furniture included tops the list of what makes the perfect student accommodation, (93%), followed by Wifi (83%), and being close to the university (81%). Students also want a garden (73%), to live with an equal number of girls and boys (52%), and to have a dishwasher (13%).

The demand for bedroom space is not as high on the continent with only a quarter (25%) of students in France bothered about having large bedrooms. In Spain, the people you are close to was the most important aspect of accommodation with almost half (48%) citing being part of the of student community as being the most important factor in choosing their accommodation.

Not wanting to let their new luxurious digs go unnoticed, today’s student is eager to be at the heart of the action with almost double the number of UK students (29%) to those in Europe (15%) citing being near pubs, clubs and nightlife an important factor when it comes to choosing a place to live. In fact, almost half of students (48%) on the continent are much more likely to live at home with family members, compared to just 18% in the UK.

The main bugbear for students, especially those in France and the Spain was being based too far from the lecture theatre. Almost three quarters (69%) said that being close to lecture theatres is the most important factor when it comes to looking for somewhere to live. The biggest issue for UK students was having noisy neighbours.

Commenting on the research, Ben Grech, co-founder, Uniplaces said, “It’s easy to read through the checklist and think you are looking at an advert for a boutique hotel. The fact is, the quality of accommodation available for today’s students is better than it has ever been with more options in terms of location, price, size and spec than ever before. This has created a generation of discerning students that are determined to get the best they can.”

Student accommodation has been given a smart facelift in recent years. Mould-infested walls and draughty windows have been replaced by slick city centre apartment blocks. In fact, a recent report from property investment firm, Jones Lang Lasalle, found that the UK student housing market has surged over the past two years, rising from under £500 million in 2010 to £3.8 billion over the first half of 2015. Non-European Union students have been the fastest growing segment, with numbers increasing by 50% over 10 years.

In spite of the advances made in student accommodation, common issues remain when it comes to both cost and competition for the best places. In the Uniplaces/ Opinium poll, over half of students (55%) claimed that finding their desirable property was not within their budget while over a third (36%) said there was a shortage of accommodation.

Despite over half of students sourcing their accommodation online, it remains a time-consuming process. Nearly half of all UK students said they spent over a third of their semester looking for private accommodation. In France it took a 33% of students over a month to find accommodation, although Spanish students found their accommodation the quickest, with only 20% still looking after a month …

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