{"id":13751,"date":"2013-09-21T10:30:42","date_gmt":"2013-09-21T10:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/?p=13751"},"modified":"2025-11-22T12:33:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:33:17","slug":"is-this-the-future-of-uk-student-accommodation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/?p=13751","title":{"rendered":"Is this the future of UK student accommodation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: Oct 2016\u00a0<\/strong>Property Week<\/a>\u00a0award boycotted by angry student judges<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless all students have access to safe, affordable accommodation at every institution and the means to pay for it, there is no cause for celebration, nor the ability for us to award a for-profit sector failing so many of our peers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

UPDATE: July 2016 <\/strong>I received another email recently, again from Aspen Woolf, only this time I decided to pursue it. Feigning interest in Kingfisher Court I booked a call which occurred the following morning. I was very honest with the bloke, told him I write a housing blog, told him I had heard there is “no exit” (see comment end of page) and what did he have to say?<\/p>\n

In short order he told me the product is “more suitable for people over 60 as an investment”. “Not suitable for people with a mortgage”. “A long term investment”.<\/p>\n

When asked directly if there is an exit he told me “Yes of course, but they are harder to sell and there’s a \u00a33000 out fee”.<\/p>\n

So essentially the guy who wrote the comment at the end of this post was right. There’s an exit in theory but you’re not encouraged to use it and if you try it’s going to be more difficult than selling a house because you have to wait for somebody in a smaller pool of investors in student accommodation to buy you out.<\/p>\n

Avoid like the plague would be my advice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\"glass_work_mainpic\"<\/p>\n

This thing arrived in my inbox unbidden and at first looked like just another commercial student accommodation block until I looked a bit closer and realised that this is being marketed in Singapore.<\/p>\n

\"rocket\"<\/p>\n

We’re all familiar by now with London real estate being marketed overseas off plan before being advertised here but student accommodation going the same way is news to me.<\/p>\n

A quick Google revealed that they’re all at it, names like Pure Student Property, Principal International, Aspen Woolf,<\/a> Student Investment Specialist. The Glassworks is clearly hot property in every sense.<\/p>\n

This rather puts a dent in my hopes that Universities might return to the old days of building their own halls of residence. I’d say those days are well and truly over. It makes my days in college look almost socialist, and the better for it.<\/p>\n

All I can say is good luck to UCL in trying to sell that rubbish they built<\/a> at Caledonian Rd overseas, they’ll be lucky to let the rooms they’ve built to students here in the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: Oct 2016\u00a0Property Week\u00a0award boycotted by angry student judges \u201cUnless all students have access to safe, affordable accommodation at every institution and the means to pay for it, there is no cause for celebration, nor the ability for us to award a for-profit sector failing so many of our peers.\u201d UPDATE: July 2016 I received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13751"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29204,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13751\/revisions\/29204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}