Using Live Student Data, The PBSA Sector Can Create The Homes Students Want

In 2014, StudentCrowd launched to help students decide three key things about their education: which university to attend, which courses to choose and which accommodation to select. Since then, the review platform has informed the choices of more than 12 million students. 

Today, the company is quickly building a name for itself beyond reviews, for providing the data the purpose-built student accommodation sector needs to create the right student accommodation in the right place. 

“What we’re most proud of is our track record of putting students first, making it clear all the options they have available to them,” founder and CEO Paul Humphreys said. “But by giving students a platform, we inadvertently created the best dataset on student accommodation in the sector.”

StudentCrowd is the only platform that contains data on every university hall and PBSA block, as well as reviews of every property, Humphreys said. This includes live data on room prices, availability and all the details that matter to students, from how effective the social team is to cleanliness.

It became clear that all this information was not just of value to students but also to the commercial property sector. A few years ago, StudentCrowd started to supply data to the likes of PwC, CBRE and JLL to allow them to create their own analyses. The company also provides information to PBSA operators and investors keen to spot opportunities to grow their portfolios.

“To an investor, it’s gold dust to understand not only market dynamics but the experience that a building is providing for students,” StudentCrowd Director of Strategic Partnerships Tuely Robins said. “If you’re looking to develop a property, how does the experience students expect differ between Liverpool and Manchester? If you’re acquiring an existing building, what are you inheriting? It’s all about understanding people’s genuine experience on the ground.”

This information is essential for developing property that matches student expectations, Robins said. She cited the example of a change in demand for catered accommodation. 

A few years ago, students were more satisfied with catered halls, but this has now switched to self-catered, driven not by the food on offer but by everything else that comes with being in a self-catered property. This could be a superior service on the whole or an amenity such as a shared study room instead of a café.

The success of StudentCrowd lies in the platform's combination of operational data about the market and student opinions, Robins said. 

“The magic comes from putting the two things together,” she said. “Each investor, operator and advisory firm uses data their own way, but there’s clearly a huge benefit to helping them hear the student voice. They’re engaging with students in ways they might not have imagined just a few years ago, which is only going to produce better accommodation.”

Recognising the rising demand for this information across the PBSA sector, last year StudentCrowd launched solutions that make its raw data more accessible. The company realised that while larger advisers have internal data scientists to manage data, small operators and investors that are focused on a wide range of sectors don’t have capacity to process information.

Once a user has purchased a licence for StudentCrowd’s personal analyst solution, they can log in and run analyses across the dataset to create the reports they need for their business. StudentCrowd has added specific data points that investors needed, such as student numbers and the pipeline of properties coming to market. 

“With our tools, we’ve given equity of access to people who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to consume it,” Robins said. “A growing number of smaller operators are using our platform now because we’ve translated data into meaningful information.”

For an investor with a building in its sights for acquisition or land to develop, StudentCrowd’s solution can give both a micro and macro picture of the market. For a detailed picture, a user can zoom into the map and see what students are saying about that location and how they review the properties nearby. 

It is possible to drill into price movement over the last four years, whether rents have increased through the cycle or dropped at the last minute. 

“You can even look at incentives, which are hidden from most other analyses,” Humphreys said. “We sometimes refer to this as the panic index — if an operator is offering £1K cash back to potential students, that could be an alarm bell.”

A user can also look at a higher level across the UK PBSA market. This view could be used by overseas investors looking to understand the sector.

StudentCrowd is keen to demonstrate how its new solutions work in practice, Humphreys said. The platform covers the whole of the UK and Ireland and has recently expanded to cover Spain and four cities in Germany. Giving investors and operators the information they need about all these markets could help them tackle the shortage in student beds many cities are experiencing.

“There are markets that clearly need investment, where demand is massively outstripping supply,” Humphreys said. “If a student doesn’t have a suitable home, they are not going to thrive at university. Private sector support is definitely part of the solution. We want to help all parties work together cohesively to create the best solutions for students, which is where having good data makes a real difference.”

This article was produced in collaboration between StudentCrowd and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.