Get ready for the 2022 letting season
At the most recent AFS webinar, the team shared insight on current key trends in the market, looking forward to 2022 as well as offering advice on the best way to maximise the opportunity to successfully let your property.
UK Student surge
This year over 500,000 students have accepted a place at University, following a record year last year. Almost 450,000 of these students are from the UK, while 59,000 are international students (a reduction of 20% over the last year).
This strong domestic market is likely to mean a strong demand for shared housing for the next two years, while the challenges in the international student market will continue into 2023, which may encourage more PBSA’s to target domestic students.
Online search the norm
The advent of Covid has accelerated the trend to searching online for student accommodation. This can be seen in the substantial increases in the numbers visiting AFS and enquiring on the properties. Over the course of 2021 AFS has benefited from a 40% increase in web traffic, with a 150% increase in enquiries during August (compared to the previous year)
Strong market demand
All indications point to a strong demand for student accommodation in 2022 nationally, with the continuation of some cities not having enough accommodation to meet demand. Where there are pockets of relative underperformance this is likely to be addressed by the re-balancing of ‘A level’ grade inflation which has tended to put pressure on some cities with high tariff universities at the expense of those that are performing less well.
Price, location and bills
The key criterial students use to make accommodation choices are price, location and the availability of bills inclusive rents. However, there are a number of things that our partners can do to maximise the exposure presence on AFS will provide. These include incorporating testimonials, using video tours and high quality images.
There is more information on these tips, plus the key trends in the presentation used during the session here
HMO’s, rent repayments and disorganised comings and goings
We were delighted to be joined on our webinar by Tessa Shepperson, the MD of Landlord Law. During the session Tessa shared an update on the key legal issues and you can access Tessa’s slides here.
Next Webinar – 2nd December 2021
Our next webinar is focused on international students and will feature our partners Housing Hand. You can sign up for the session on zoom, here . Please note that you must register in advance of the session to be able to join.
