Pizzas, Posters and Premium Rents: Manchester's Student Housing Sector Surges
Manchester student housing rents rose by 5% for studio rooms in 2017, ahead of the national trend, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield.
The city has a total of 23,578 purpose built student beds and is the largest student housing market outside London, which has 81,000.
"Limited purpose-built student accommodation development and competition in the city mean that headline rental growth has been ahead of the national average, with en-suite prices up by 3% and studio rents up by 5% on the previous year," Cushman said.
Nationally, rents per bed in student accommodation increased 2.9% between academic years 2016-17 and 2017-18, marginally above the 2.7% seen during the same period in the previous year.
The average rent for an en suite room in Manchester is £142 a week, a shade under Edinburgh's £144, behind Bristol's £153 and trailing the highest price U.K. location, London, at £195.
However, the research warns that a lack of recent development — largely the result of a city council move to discourage speculative development after agreeing a long pipeline of approvals — means that "overall accommodation quality in the city has slipped behind that of other major U.K cities".
Forthcoming developments include Unite’s 30-storey, 573-bed development at New Wakefield Street and Empiric Student Property’s redevelopment of Victoria Point.
