Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA)
Purpose built student accommodation (PBSA)
- As its name suggests, housing built and provided specifically for students.
- This can be provided by both universities, on-campus; or by private investors, off-campus.
- Local residents also pressurise local authorities (LAs) to consent to such developments to restrict student numbers in local communities. See studentification and ghostification.
- In some areas like London, demand for Private Remted Sector (PRS) housing is so high that PBSA developers are more readily granted LA consent to build more PBSA accommodation to alleviate such pressures.
- Some such buildings are perceived as unsightly or intrusive or not in-keeping with surrounding housing, deterring LA consent to build.
- Both student and non-student rents are affected by the absence or presence of PBSA due to the knock-on-effect within the wider area.
- At the time of writing The Renters Reform Bill / Renters Rights Bill is expected to be enacted imminently by the end of 2025 or early 2026. This is likely to see many small portfolio landlords exit the student rental market due to the more favourable terms PBSA will enjoy over less favoured PRS landlords.
- PRS homes occupied by students are increasingly reverting back to owner-occupation.
- Fewer private student landlords will likely result in yet more demand for additional PBSA.
- In Scottish university cities following similar earlier enactment, a dearth of student accommodation is said to have resulted in increased student-rents. However, those PRS landlords remaining in the student sector are not benefitting from any such increases; on the contrary, they are losing rent due to shorter term academic lets (where the fixed term tenancies have been abolished students are permitted to leave their accommodation at will, providing only limited notice to quit. This leaves student landlords unable to rent to other students for any remaining academic term particularly if they have contracted to provide a housing tenancy for the commencement of the following academic year with a new group of students.
- All political parties are in support of the new legislation - to benefit tenants - but with less choice and higher rents, not all tenants are benefitting! Ill considered legislation clogged up the housing market prior to the 1988 Housing Act which freed-up the market. In pursuit of vote winning policies, we are in danger of ignoring past lessons.