Unite Students, a leading provider of student accommodation in the UK, has announced strong growth in its Q3 2024 trading update, with 97.5% occupancy and 8.2% like-for-like rental growth for the 2024/25 academic year. This success is driven by a combination of factors, including:

Record demand from students: A scarcity of student housing in the UK has led to high demand for Unite Students' properties.

Resilient international demand: Despite changes to visa policies, international student demand remains strong, with acceptances through UCAS remaining broadly flat year-on-year. The company expects the visa changes to impact lower-tariff institutions more, particularly those with a high dependence on students from Nigeria and India.

Normalizing domestic demand: Demand from domestic students has normalized after the exceptional sales cycle of 2023/2024, with undergraduate acceptances for UK 18-year-olds up 3% year-on-year.

Positive outlook for the future: Unite Students anticipates continued strong demand in the 2025/26 academic year, driven by demographic growth and a positive government stance towards international student recruitment. This, coupled with tighter visa rules in competing student destinations like Australia and Canada, is expected to further increase the UK's attractiveness as a study destination.

Unite Students is also investing in its future:

Expanding development pipeline: The company is investing £913m to deliver 4,600 additional beds between 2025 and 2028, addressing the ongoing housing shortage in key university cities.

Sustainable construction: The company's Mercury Point PBSA scheme is designed to adhere to its sustainable construction framework, aiming for net-zero carbon in construction and operation.

Joe Lister, Chief Executive Officer of Unite Students, commented: "The outlook for the business is positive with strong student demand at a time of limited new supply and ongoing investment into our portfolio and platform. We have made good progress with the delivery of our record development pipeline and deploying the proceeds of our recent capital raise. These projects will deliver much-needed new student homes in some of the UK's strongest university cities and help to ease wider housing shortages."