Price, location and bills hold the key to student accommodation
Recent research from accommodationforstudents.com shows that price, location and the availability of bills inclusive rents are the top three factors students consider when making a decision to rent a property.
The insight is as a result of a major study, involving in-depth interviews with students, focus groups and a survey of over 1,000. The work forms part of an ongoing programme of research which is aimed at improving understanding of the decision making process students go through when selecting student accommodation.
The most important factors that students consider when choosing accommodation are;
- Price
- Location (proximity to University)
- Bills inclusive
- Proximity to amenities
- Safety and security
- Student friendly location
- Who am I sharing with
- Well maintained and managed
- Facilities
When looking at these headline statistics in more depth it appears that the relationship between price and the other factors is more sophisticated. While price may be the most important initial consideration, there is a degree of flexibility in the inter relationship with the other factors.
56% of students have increased their budget after they started to search
This can be best illustrated by the fact that over ¼ of students do not actually set their accommodation budget before they start searching for a place to live. In addition over 56% of respondents told us that they had to increase their budget after they had started searching. In the majority of cases this was because they wanted to find better quality accommodation.
Bills inclusive
It was interesting to note that students are now viewing bills inclusive rent as being an essential element of a tenancy, with some students not willing to consider properties that did not offer this. When comparing student’s perceptions of HMO’s and PBSA’s it was clear that the majority of students felt that PBSA’s were much more likely to offer bills inclusive rents than HMO’s.
Shared Housing ‘a right of passage’
One theme that became clear through the research was that students very much viewed moving into shared accommodation as a ‘right of passage’ – a key part of the University experience. Despite the dramatic change in the student accommodation sector over the last decade, finding and sharing a house was seen an important aspect of University culture by both international students and UK students.
More information
The AFS team will be producing a full report on the findings in early May. You can access an overview of the information here, https://www.slideshare.net/NickEmms2/how-students-choose-their-accommodation from a presentation which was held online on the 21st of April. For those of you that would like to view the full session you can access a recording here https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/kbb1VaS6uwOBORdgB8cIT70hFFUOLNU-FbV5EaEDnohnnCgYL63nvN64E_2sOKWJ.9LDCco_BoJxIuPrA
please feel free to email [email protected] if you have any questions about this data.
