One of the UK’s biggest student accommodation providers is setting up an offshoot business to concentrate on private lettings – because student numbers are continuing to shrink.
Plymouth-headquartered , is setting up a company called Clever Eco Lets, to highlight an environmentally friendly message, which will concentrate on letting accommodation to the non-student sector as university and college rolls continue to fall.
The new venture, which will be based in a new office in Plymouth, is targeting such people as graduates, key workers such as doctors and nurses, and migrant workers, particularly younger renters who can’t get on the housing ladder and have a “green” outlook.
It comes as the firm hammers out a five-year plan to deal with a what it sees as a dramatic change in student numbers, with even the University of Plymouth’s official figures showing a reduction from 22,650 in 2012/13 to 21,203 in 2016/17 with further falls expected.
And student behaviour has changed too, with Clever Student Lets chief executive Henry Hutchins saying many students have ditched the binge-drinking and all-night partying and are concentrating on their studies, even to the extent of wanting to live away from the temptation of nightclubs.
So he is now future proofing his company, the largest student lettings firm in the South West and among the biggest in the country, and said: “The one thing we can be certain about is tomorrow is going to be different – and if we are not ready for tomorrow we are dead.”
He explained: “We are setting up Clever Eco Lets and going quite hard into the traditional market, for people like graduates, NHS workers, we already house about 60 Polish workers.
“It is something we have been thinking for two years, with the dramatic drop in student numbers, and looking at what’s going to happen over the next five years.
“We are slowly building the company and looking for another office with street frontage. I have been looking for three months, I know what I want, it has to be on a thoroughfare, with high visibility and easy parking. Not necessarily in the city centre, we are looking at Mutley Plain and Exeter Street. We will take on more staff eventually. In our five-year plan, probably another 10 people.
“We will launch next year, but are already building a portfolio of lets. An entirely new company with new properties, and particularly interested in traditional family houses, which we are short of. A lot of student houses are ordinary houses which were converted, so we are looking at refurbishing them.
“The whole student market is the most difficult I have ever known it in 12 years,” he added. “Student numbers are down dramatically, it’s about a 20% drop in the past 18 months, just in Plymouth. It’s been hit harder in other cities.”
Mr Hutchins said demand from students to live in large, converted houses, is down, but that has been compensated by a surge in workers happy to share a property.
Halls of residence, however, are “buoyant”, as are small one- to four-bedroom flats and houses. CSL is still a success and is on target for the 3,000 properties it lets to students to be about 98% full.
But Mr Hutchins said the locations students are interested in are also changing – with many less interested in being near nightspots.
“It used to be all party-time,” he said. “Now we are seeing they do not want to live close to a pub or club because it interferes with their studies.”
He said that is particularly true of some foreign students, for instance those from China, which tend to “work flat out”, but seems to have now been taken on by Brits.
“I’ve seen some remarkable changes to attitudes to educational life,” he said. “Undergraduates are remarkably different, more mature and sensible.”
