Student accommodation rent report 2015 1
Introduction Student accommodation rent report 2015 Executive summary The average student rent value for 2015 is 82.09 per week, an increase of 1.43 from last year and 8.36 from 2010. The median value of cities median rent values in 2015 is 80 (the same as 2014) while the median value of cities average rent values is 79 (down 1 from 2014). This decrease in the median ARV along with an overall ARV increase suggests that rent increases in the most expensive cities are skewing the overall average higher, while cities student accommodation markets have generally remained stable in the last year. Regional disparities in rent values remain in place, as students in the North of England continue to pay much less ( 14.73 less per week) than students in the South, while students in London pay considerably more on average ( 122.01 per week) than the rest of the UK. Students in Wales again pay the least, with an average weekly rent value of 69.70, followed by students in Scotland who pay an average of 72.81 per week. The bills inclusive property sample was greater than the non-bills inclusive property sample for the first time recorded in 2015, continuing the upward trend in the availability of bills inclusive accommodation. The average additional cost in bills inclusive properties is Methodology All rental values were drawn from the AFS database, from which average rental values (ARVs), median rental values (MRVs), minimum and maximum rents were calculated for each city. For all city-level analyses, only cities with at least 10 properties listed were considered significant and included in the analysis, except where a higher cut-off point is noted. For temporal analyses the cities were required to have at least 10 properties in each year analysed. The total number of cities with properties listed on the site for 2015 is 84, of which 69 contain at least 10 properties. As the annual rent analysis is conducted mid-year, the current year s overall rent data is likely to change by the time of the following year s report to reflect the completed 2
Overall rent values Student accommodation rent report 2015 Overall rent values The overall average weekly cost of a bedroom for students in 2015 is 82.06, up 1.43 from last year (see Table 1). As Fig. 1 shows, the rent has consistently risen by an average of 1.67 each year since 2010. Table 1: Weekly rent values per room over time Year 2010 73.73 Average weekly rent per room 2011 75.32 2012 76.03 2013 77.08 2014 80.66 2015 82.09 3
Overall rent values Student accommodation rent report 2015 The median rent (measured both as a median of the ARVs across all cities in the UK and as a median of each city s own MRVs) has not risen from last year, however (see Fig. 2, below), remaining at 80 among city MRVs and falling 1 to 79 among city ARVs (see Table 2, below). This suggests that while rent increases in the high-end of the student accommodation market have brought the mean up, the overall market has remained stable over the last year. Table 2: Median weekly rent values per room over Year Median of sig. MRVs Median of sig. ARVs 2010 71.50 74 2011 75 75 2012 75 76 2013 75 75 2014 80 80 2015 80 79 In 72.5% of cities with 10 properties or more, the difference between the ARV and MRV is within a range of +/- 3, suggesting that student rental markets are generally quite moderate across the country, without an imbalance in extreme highs and lows in rent prices. However, in the remaining cities, the difference between MRV can be seen to be as much as 22 in Glasgow, where high-priced accommodation skews the average rental value much higher than the median, or 13 in Uxbridge where it is the availability of low cost accommodation which anchors the ARV well below the median for the area. The ARV is greater than the MRV in just over half of the cities and is lower in 38% of cities, suggesting that extremities in the student rental market are more likely to be found at the high end of the rental scale than the low 4
Differences across the UK Student accommodation rent report 2015 Differences across the UK Rent values vary predictably by both city and region, with the South generally experiencing considerably higher rents than the rest of the UK, and with students in Wales and the North of England paying the least. Map 1 shows the rent disparity for students across Great Britain. Map 1: Average weekly rent value per room by region Students in London pay almost twice as much ( 122.01 per week) as students in Wales ( 69.70 per week), and more than 30 per week more on average than students in any other region. Rents across the rest of England vary sharply between the South, where the average weekly rent is 90.96, and the remainder of the country where the average rent values lie between 76.23 and 77.32. Students in Scotland pay notably less than students anywhere in England at 72.81 per 5
Differences across the UK Student accommodation rent report 2015 Table 3 (below) shows the rent range for cities across the UK (with a minimum of 30 properties) based on minimum and maximum weekly rent data. There does not appear to be a spatial component to the rent range, as cities from across the UK are represented in each quadrant of the table. Table 3: Weekly rent cost range by city, 2015 City Min rent Max Rent Range ( ) City Min rent Max Rent Range ( ) Plymouth 39 185 146 Aberystwyth 55 125 70 Exeter 50 190 140 Loughborough 50 120 70 Nottingham 40 180 140 Stafford 55 125 70 Liverpool 35 173 138 Sunderland 30 95 65 Coventry 50 173 123 Cheltenham 58 120 62 Lancaster 29 152 123 Edinburgh 73 133 60 Kingston 19 139 120 Hatfield 58 118 60 Birmingham 40 156 116 Worcester 50 110 60 Leeds 50 165 115 York 55 115 60 London 80 195 115 Bath 68 126 58 Manchester 28 140 112 Dundee 46 104 58 Newcastle 30 141 111 Derby 50 105 55 Huddersfield 30 140 110 Wolverhampton 37 88 51 Brighton 75 179 104 Crewe 40 90 50 Sheffield 40 140 100 Newcastle-under-lyme 48 98 50 Southampton 45 145 100 Norwich 54 100 46 Bristol 58 156 98 Bournemouth 63 108 45 Preston 40 138 98 Aberdeen 89 133 44 Swansea 35 131 96 Winchester 75 115 40 Portsmouth 55 150 95 Guildford 83 121 38 Stoke 40 135 95 Lincoln 62 100 38 Leicester 45 139 94 Bangor 75 110 35 Durham 39 130 91 Stockton 40 75 35 Canterbury 50 140 90 Northampton 65 98 33 Chester 60 150 90 Reading 61 92 31 Cardiff 50 133 83 Hull 60 87 27 Salford 45 125 80 Bolton 50 75 25 Middlesbrough 40 112 72 Chichester 75 95 20 Hartlepool 77 87 10 6
Differences across the UK Student accommodation rent report 2015 Map 2 shows the distribution of median rent values across the UK and further illustrates the north/south divide in rent values, as most of the green MRVs can be found in the North West, the North East, Wales and Scotland, while the majority of red and orange MRVs are found in the South of England. Map 2: Median rent values across the UK (2015) 7
Differences across the UK Student accommodation rent report 2015 Map 3 illustrates the difference between ARVs in 2010 and 2015 across the UK, and shows that ARVs have increased in all regions. Most notably, rents have increased significantly in Scotland and have risen the least in the North East of England. Map 3: Net ARV change from 2010 to 2015. Fig. 3 shows the year-on-year changes in average weekly rent prices across the UK, and illustrates how all regions have risen in the period except for London, where weekly rent prices have fallen steadily. Fig. 3 also shows the difference between London and the rest of the UK, as well as the difference between the South of England (which is consistently well above the overall national average) and the other regions of England (which are all consistently below the national average). 8
Bills inclusive Student accommodation rent report 2015 Bills inclusive The proportion of properties offering at least some bills included in the rent price has increased again to 51.5% and is now at the highest rate observed (see Fig. 4). This is the first time that more than half of the properties available to students have included bills in the rent, and continues an upward trend in availability of bills inclusive rent since 2005 when the data for rents were first available. The average room costs are much closer together than the median costs when comparing bills inclusive properties to non-bills inclusive properties (see Table 4), suggesting that more expensive properties that do not offer bills inclusive, such as those in the London area, distort the mean for this measure. Based on medians taken from both the average rent values across cities in the UK and the median rent values across cities, the average added cost of bills inclusive properties can be seen to be between 9 and 13 per Table 4: Weekly cost of bills inclusive vs non-bills inclusive properties across the Median of ARVs Median of MRVs Average cost per room Bills included in rent 83 85 83.56 Bills not included 74 72 80.93 in rent Difference 9 13 2.63 9
Bills inclusive Student accommodation rent report 2015 The spatial distribution across cities (with at least 50 listed properties) varies widely, from places where only bills inclusive options are available to places where bills inclusive is not available at all (see Fig. 5). 10
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