06/08/2024 Higher Education blogs The Student Accommodation Podcast Summit Accommodation Matters host Jenny Shaw recently collaborated with experts from across the Higher[...]

Accommodation Matters host Jenny Shaw recently collaborated with experts from across the Higher Education sector to bring together a very special podcast episode.

Join Jenny along with Sarah Canning and Deenie Lee (The Property Marketing Strategists), Dan Smith (Student Housing Consultancy), Laura Bosworth (REAL), Richard Stott (Kexgill Group) and Rebecca O'Hare (University of Leeds) for this special episode discussing crucial issues in student accommodation.

This top team of professionals share expert views on key topics, including the evolution of PBSA rooms, adapting to changing demographics, using data to reveal opportunities and whether students will demand further flexibility from their accommodation in future. It's a conversation you definitely don't want to miss.

If you enjoyed the episode, do check out our collaborators' podcasts - Housed: The Shared Living Podcast (Sarah, Deenie and Dan), Get Real About Marketing (Laura) and Free Food, Free Drinks (Rebecca), available from all good podcast platforms.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of individual guest speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Unite Students and/or Unite Group plc.

Episode transcript: 'The Student Accommodation Podcast Summit'

Jenny Shaw: Hello, I hope you're having a great summer. This is Jenny Shaw, your usual host for the Accommodation Matters podcast, and today I've got a very special episode for you. A few weeks ago I met up with some fabulous colleagues from the student accommodation world for a student accommodation podcast summit and my goodness, we covered such a lot of ground in a short time from current challenges to latest trends to the needs of the future. We cover buildings and feelings and funding and marketing and of course students themselves.

Now, we do have a few little issues with the audio right at the very start, but I can promise you it does get better as the episode goes on, so stick with it. Here's what we had to say.

Sarah Canning: Hello and welcome to this very special podcast. This is the Student Accommodation Podcast Summit. I'm Sarah Canning from The Property Marketing Strategists and I co-host Housed - The Shared Living Podcast with Deenie and Dan.

Deenie Lee: I'm Deenie Lee from The Property Marketing Strategists and Co-host of Housed - The Shared Living Podcast.

Richard Stott: I'm Richard Stott, the managing director of the Kexgill Group, trading as the University Quarter in the UK and also multifamily housing in Germany.

Jenny Shaw: Hello, I'm Jenny Shaw from Unite Students and I'm the host of the Accommodation Matters podcast.

Laura Bosworth: And I'm Laura Bosworth from Real Agency and I co-host the podcast, Get Real About Marketing.

Dan Smith: I'm Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy and I'm one third of Housed - The Shared Living Podcast.

Rebecca O'Hare: I'm Rebecca O'Hare, Interim Deputy Director of Residential Services at the University of Leeds.

Sarah Canning: And we're very happy to have you here. Thank you Rebecca. We've all been in the sector a long time and when we look back, what is the biggest challenge we have seen in the past 10 to 15 years in student accommodation? Rebecca, I'll let you go first.

Rebecca O'Hare: Wonderful question and quite a complex one as well, Sarah. Delighted to kickstart the podcast with the answer. There's a breadth and depth of things and an hour and a half podcast won't cover it.

When you talk about wider student experience issues around mental health concerns, the cost of living and affordability, issues around freedom of speech and protests on campus and a range of things, all of which affect student accommodation in many different ways, although you might not necessarily believe that or see that, but there's been such a breadth and depth of things that have been going on within the sector, that really - it's been such a challenge for universities and the private sector. So I don't have much time to go into as much detail as I'd like to.

Dan Smith: I'd just say that I think affordability is one of the biggest issues we've got. The more beds that we build, the more affordable the beds will be, but the issue is we haven't been able to build as many as we need so that affordable stock just hasn't really come to the fore. I think we focus very heavily on studio-led developments, but also focused on the premium sector or at least the mid-range. And we know from the research that we've seen that students are actually more satisfied in the more affordable end or at the super premium end. So I think there is a bit of a value gap there.

We've got to make sure that we are able to build those affordable beds because we're pricing some students out of going to university, to be completely honest, and we'll be putting them off coming into the UK. There's a lot more and I know we'll come onto affordability as a key issue, but I think that's one of the key challenges. Building affordable beds.

Laura Bosworth: Just following on from that, you said about value and coming from a marketing perspective, I think there's a lot about showing what that value add is. What do students get from student accommodation and how do you market it? I think one of the biggest challenges has been around the resi experience and lots of providers coming out with events, programmes and things like that.

But actually, what is the value add and what are they getting for that, for the price that they're paying? And that goes up every year and students have a voice and they have eyes and ears and they know they can see that it's going up and they're very vocal about what they're getting and then the impact of how we market that, that's been a big challenge I think.

Deenie Lee: Just coming back to what Rebecca was saying around all those different changes and the changes in culture and things that are impacting how people go to university and therefore how they live, I'm going to take it back to actually with just the original questions there that were asked around what's the biggest change we've seen in student accommodation?

And I'm going to say apart from there being a private purpose-built sector in student accommodation - not a lot, actually, in terms of the product we're building. In terms of actually the bedroom, it's still the same as it was in the 1960s. Yes, we've got all these great amenity spaces, but to Laura's point, where's the value add? Are we selling the value add? Is it what students want? So my fundamental starting point is actually, other than the private sector coming in and building new purpose-built blocks, we haven't really moved on in student accommodation as much as we should have done in those years.

Richard Stott: I'm with Dan on the affordability bit. That's the bit from my career in student accommodation that really worries me because when I went to polytechnic, obviously university now, I had a grant. Thank you. Now I can see people not affording to go to the university of choice. Now I think that's such a shame. When you leave home, you have that rite of passage. If you stay at home and go to the local university, it's not quite the same.

I think that's changing and we have to do something about that because all the brand new PBSA - a lot of it in the hotspots - when I'm seeing the rents as we drove in here, I saw the rents in Bristol. "Wow, £300 a week is average."

Dan Smith: Yeah, it's horrifying.

Richard Stott: And I'm in areas where I'm thinking, "Well, I'm going to be actually 30 pounds cheaper than what's on campus to attract them when they've had the first year on campus." Here, £30? What's that on £300-£350 a week? It's a big challenge. I get why people are building in hotspots, why wouldn't you? But after a while, as you know in the property world, supply meets demand and you can catch a cold, but we really need to tackle affordability, because that fundamentally is changing the landscape we're in.

Jenny Shaw: Yeah, so I'm going to talk about the operational side, the service side rather than the product. And the biggest change that I've seen since I've been in the sector has really been the role that we play in student lives. So when I first joined, it was very much about organised fun and having a reasonably decent environment.

Now it's very much about responding to students' needs and providing some fairly hefty wraparound support, and I think that's an ongoing trend. We've got students coming to university now who have been through the pandemic at a really crucial stage of their life. It's affected their mental health, it's affected their social confidence. They're coming to university, more of them have a disability, they're coming from more diverse backgrounds. So we've really had to, and keep on having to, get really good at support and inclusion.

Sarah Canning: I think I'm with Jenny. I think the thing that I think has changed and hasn't changed over the past 10 to 15 years is the customer. And I always say, we all stay the same or we don't because we just get older, but our customer base stays the same age. But within that customer base, their needs, their habits, their preferences, their experiences all change.

And I think because we're talking about bricks and mortar, it's very difficult to keep up with that level of change in an efficient and sustainable way. We can't just decide every year because the needs and wins of students change, we've got to build something different. But I think - I guess to Deenie's point as well, is: has the product evolved enough for that changing demographic really and how they're changing and how their experiences are moulding. I'm sure we will come into it later.

Dan Smith: It's the product and the service. How much of that is changing?

Rebecca O'Hare: I would probably argue that it's not changing enough. I think within universities - putting my university hat on, because obviously I work in one - at times it's more easy to respond to those changing needs from students.

Jenny talked about inclusion, students with access requirements. We see ourselves our own applications and requests from students and we're going above and beyond to meet those needs so students can have the same equitable university experience as anybody else. And the feedback we get is that they're not able to get that in the private sector, that they're not listening to the needs they have. They don't understand students who are perhaps neurodivergent or who have a complex range of requirements and a complex range of adjustments that they want to put into place.

Yes, there are minimal things they'll do under the Equality Act, but actually when they want to do more to really personalise that, that's not being done, so they are reliant on the university doing that. And I think that's a real shame. And actually if more and more operators want to ensure they're putting the student voice at the heart of what they do, they need to start actually diversifying the product in that way and be more receptive to those requests.

Laura Bosworth: It's interesting, everything that's been said, and Sarah, I think it was you that had said about the ability to change because of the operational sense - maybe it was Jenny - of how the operational sense is and how difficult it's to make changes like that. But I definitely think, even with some of the stuff that you guys at The Property Marketing Strategists have done in terms of asking students and getting feedback, that's now helping to propel the industry, I think.

Because Rebecca, you've just said there, feedback from students is X, Y, Z. Have we always had that? And now that we've got it, I'd like to think that the rate of change is going to speed up and it's going get better because we're asking the questions and therefore we can act on feedback.

But also, sorry to add something else into the mix. I think it was 2016, was it? The first Gen Zs went to university, around that year? And now we've spent the last eight years talking about Gen Z and that's been a big buzzword, and now we're talking about Gen Alpha and how else are we keeping up with it? How else are we making changes? How is that going to work going forward? What do you think? Is that rate of change going to get better? Are we going to be able to do things better and it not take another 15 years?

Jenny Shaw: I think because partly because of the pandemic and partly just the rate of change in the world, we're seeing not just generational differences but actually cohort differences. And that's why we've been - this is a shameless plug now, but we have an Applicant Index which we publish each year, and we've seen some quite dramatic swings between cohorts in terms of what they need and characteristics and what they expect.

But going back to the point about service, it's so much easier to change your service than your building. So I think we need to lean into it.

Richard Stott: I'm with you on that completely. I think the problem how we can do everything on our phone, and we don't have that human interaction, for me it's all about human interaction. It's the loneliness of somebody just sat in their room. So really it's about training the first point of contact, which is the cleaner or the maintenance plan. They've got to be that sort of answer.

Laura Bosworth: That's not new news though either is it?

Richard Stott: It's not new news.

Laura Bosworth: It's just that not everybody's actually cottoned onto that and done it very well.

There was a building in Leicester and I remember one of the maintenance staff had called himself, I think it was Wayne or something, and they called him Wayne the Wizard or something. And that's what the students had named him because he could do anything, they could go to him for anything and he was the first point of contact and that's not what he was recruited to do. He was recruited to look after the maintenance and whatever, but it just turned out that students really liked him and got a good vibe and he was great with them because he was a people person and I think that goes for the majority of people.

So it comes back down to the JD and the people that you're recruiting into the business as well. I think that makes a really big difference to the service that you can offer and the value that you add because ultimately it's students' homes, they're living in these places and the people that are walking around make that experience for them.

Dan Smith: They're like gold dust. Yeah, those staff members who will go above and beyond, whether they are a General Manager, a maintenance person, a events coordinator, or the sort of more recent phenomenon that we've seen with leasing and marketing strategists that we've seen go into each property or leasing marketing coordinators in certain properties.

I think getting someone who's a generalist who fully understands what it takes to firstly live in these properties and the problems that the residents will have, the students will have, but then what they can actually do about it and being proactive about it.

That's one of the really rare things that I think a lot of third party operators in particular, and I'm generalising here, I think they struggle with that because I think there's slightly less of a sense of ownership in that way and the salaries may not be up to the level that they necessarily should be and not just on the affordable end or the premium end or wherever. I think that PBSA is lagging behind the likes of BTR, co-living, hospitality in terms of those salaries. And that's where we need to make sure that we are benchmarking and that we are paying people to go above and beyond.

And I think we're just kind of scratching the surface there and in the battle - or, dare I say it, the race to the bottom that I've seen in some third party operations - that is mainly around the management fees in particular and I'm trying to educate investors that they do need to improve those management fees.

But I do think that there is a correlation between the quality of staff and the quality of service and the reviews you get and the amount that you pay your staff and, in that battle to try and reduce the opex fees as much as you possibly can or the opex lines, I think there is a bit of a focus on, "Right, we could reduce that staffing," or "We can get rid of that person, or this person," or whatever.

So having those generalists that can - whether they're a maintenance person or a housekeeper or the General Manager or whatever - if they can step in at any time and perform multiple different roles and make sure that the student is happy first and foremost, they are absolutely gold dust. So the more that we can do to educate investors not to try and reduce staffing structures, or not to try and reduce salaries just to improve your opex, I think that's what we need to be doing.

Sarah Canning: That's the elephant in the room, really - is if we're looking about the rate of change and whether we can keep up with that change over the next 10 to 15 years, it comes down to money. And will investors keep insisting on the same level of return as they've been getting over the last 10 to 15 years?

Because if they do, then that's going to increase. That's going to show rent increases of 10, 15, 20% year on year, which is not sustainable. But the staff do need to be paid more and the operational costs keep increasing, so there has to come a tipping point. And Richard, you've probably got much more insight on it than the rest of us - will those expectations change from investors?

Richard Stott: It's tough for us making money. Bottom line is, we've been hit by inflation, interest rates and staff costs have been part of that inflation and we try to pay well to retain staff, because you want the same person every year. And, as Dan said, gold dust. The people who are there for 10 years, 20 years and they grow into their role and they become part - more important than - the building really.

I'm just back from a trip to Germany to see our multifamily buildings. The blocks that work are the ones with a strong caring housemaster, they call them. And they look after everyone, everyone knows them and they want to be in that building because somebody really cares. They go outside and pick up the cigarette butts. That's what I really, really counts.

Laura Bosworth: But then we're in a chicken and egg scenario with you increasing your salaries because you need - well, you want to look after your staff, but then in order to do that, do you have to increase your rents? And then how do you increase your service without overloading the staff? Where we were talking earlier about these superstar maintenance cleaners, frontline people that are engaging with the residents.

If you put too much on them and just sort of say, well, if we create the great environment then that is wellbeing, therefore we don't need to put a wellbeing service together, then how are those people going to go about their daily jobs as well? And then you think, oh well we're putting loads on them, should we be paying them more? Then you have to come back and put your rents up.

Deenie Lee: But then is this, there's a role for technology in this isn't there that actually we need to make an investment in technology and progress for where the modern world is. And one thing I was reflecting onto your original question, Laura, is that actually we've been toddlers, infants, teenagers as a sector and actually we are coming into our maturity years, which I'm hoping will bring that level of understanding that actually we can't stand still. We've got to keep up.

I think young people are changing at a pace that we haven't seen before and if we don't keep up, we're going to become dinosaurs. We're going to become dinosaurs in the room and then there will be a new flock of investors that probably come in and go, "Actually let's shake this sector off and let's go and do something else." So I kind of feel as we get to that age of maturity, we need to make those smart decisions to say actually this service is really important. How we pay people is really important.

But actually a lot of the other stuff we're doing like the big social spaces, maybe, is not as important - but actually where can technology and where can AI and where can we bring in things that give us those cost savings, which is an investment, not a cost and it's a one time capital cost. And that's maybe where we can start to see those changes that hit that vulnerability point.

Jenny Shaw: I'd like to go back to your point Laura about is it the people or is it the systems? And I think it's so important to absolutely have great people who are good with people and can build those relationships, but you've got to support them with processes and training and training on boundaries. There's so many ways that this can go horribly wrong if you don't have something backing that up. And I realise that's a lot easier to do if you're a large company rather than a small operator, but it's just absolutely essential for everyone's protection and support.

Richard Stott: I think that's where Unipol come in on the PBSA world, they do provide great training as we've all been to the training.

Dan Smith: I think you two are both in quite a unique situation in the sense of your retention rate of staff. I know Richard, we've spoken about it previously, how long people tend to stay with you once they've started, and I'm sure that Unite Students have all of the staff benefits that you can imagine from a PLC.

And I think that that's quite a rare thing in the industry and there are a lot of operators that are particularly worried about effectively General Managers, site staff, moving from one building to another, going from one operator to another and therefore they might not necessarily invest as fully as they possibly could or should in salaries, in staff training, in development programmes, et cetera.

And I think that that's something again that is just something you need to put out there quite selflessly as an operator to say we're going to train our people to be the best that they possibly can be in their roles, give them a development plan to take their roles forward if that's what they want - it's not for everyone - and also we're going to pay them really well. By doing that, you should then elicit some form of loyalty.

And I think that's where I know that you both have good retention rates of your staff. There's very little churn and I work with a lot of different operators and investors who are concerned that operators, that their General Managers will go from one building to another to another because they're getting paid maybe a couple of thousand pounds more or whatever it might be. But that matters. Depending on your salary level or what you do - even £500 matters. So I think there does need to be a bit more of a focus on that from all operators, no matter the level.

Laura Bosworth: Sorry, do you think universities as well? Because I've always felt in the last 15 years, there's a push pull between who's learning from who between the private operators and the universities with ResLife. It came in from universities, they were doing it really well and then private operators thought well we can do it differently, but talking about staff retention, universities- Rebecca, this is your area really, but in my knowledge I'm sure that there's much longer retention of staff in a university. So what are you doing differently?

Rebecca O'Hare: I think it's probably changing, actually. I definitely came into the University of Leeds and inherited teams where the majority of team members had put down a solid 15, 20 years. And I see that in other services in our university and in other universities generally.

But it is changing because actually, the people who've come into posts which have become vacant or which we've created in the last couple of years, they've got a different sense of drive. They have different requests around their professional development. They want to get promoted sooner, as soon as possible in some cases. They have very clear requests in what they need regarding training, development, salary expectations; they want to know about hybrid working.

And I think actually, we don't really talk about it in the university sector - I've not really heard anyone talk about it in PBSA generally - is there's all this talk in society about a four day week. People are really starting to measure up actually what is available to them because there's all this talk generally within society about better work-life balance.

And if you go on to social media and you go on to TikTok - which I do, and I talk about this with lots of different people - my algorithm on TikTok is very much about what most Gen Z people will see. And it's all about not being a corporate girl, not being a corporate person, actually working in a more hybrid manner, doing what makes you happy, not conforming to the system. And that is coming in spades now, where people are challenging the authority so to speak, to create the better society and future for themselves and it's really interesting.

How do we adapt to that and how do we respond to it in a way that works to them but works for us? And I think that's going to be the next thing we're going to start to see in some universities is these requests for four day weeks. And I will say I'm an advocate for it and I've already thought of ways in which can make it work and I would love to see a university pilot. I would be so excited to see that happen and I think that's something that's definitely coming our way.

Dan Smith: And that's one of the difficulties with PBSA operations or university accommodation operations. Four day weeks. How do you do that when your presence is supposed to be on site? That is a challenge. That's going to take some investment in support. Or, do you have this hybrid model where you have a ring doorbell or something and you go through to an HQ? There are only certain companies that could possibly offer that.

And I think there are technological solutions that we could have to bolster that and provide more support to staff, but that is going to be a major challenge to operators to show that flexibility. I think that's going to be a tricky one.

Rebecca O'Hare: I don't think the four day week is as hard as you might make it out to be. I actually think it's a scheduling issue. You might have to hire a few more staff, but I think you could have staff working Monday to Thursday and staff working on Tuesday to Friday.

And actually if you bring in five over seven day contracts, because a lot of us need to move in that way to have people available in receptions or at any time of the day for students to be able to access them. You have that caveat of that, you could have people still getting their four day week and their three day weekends, or you can structure it in a way where you can have a four day weekend. They work Monday to Thursday one week and Tuesday to Friday the next week.

I have thought long and hard about this. I think actually, it's a scheduling issue and there might be extra resource required in terms of hiring a few extra staff to make that work, but it's definitely not impossible.

Laura Bosworth: Yeah, I was just going to say I'm going to be controversial. I don't think it's as easy as it seems the exact time that you were saying the opposite, but that's because I was wondering if we were talking about shift work or if we were talking about the business shutting down after a four day week and then yeah, how do you manage that when you have residents living there 24/7?

But if we're talking about somebody doing a four-day week, somebody doing a three-day week, then yeah, I agree. Scheduling issue. I think it can be done, but then you need the right people on the front line and not - the managers in for four days and then when they're not there for three days, so much stuff doesn't get done.

Deenie Lee: But is this so much about that we've got this structure and we can't move away from this structure? And actually if we say a four day week doesn't mean a business has to shut down. I mean, if you look at the NHS, the NHS never shuts down, and it works - albeit maybe not quite well at the moment. It has worked over the years and it can work. And I think it's just about taking away everything we understood and knew.

Actually, I absolutely agree with you, I think the next generation of workers coming up want a very different work environment to what we had, and we find it massively challenging as a generation when we are really questioned by Gen Z, saying "Well why would I do that? Why would I work beyond my contract hours?" And you're like, "Because we have to?"

And that's not going to fly. They go, "Well I don't have to, so my contract says that's what I'm going to do." And I think we've got to take away everything that we understood around our corporate structures and go, "Right, okay, what's going to work for the business and what's going to work for these people?" Because that's how we're going to get delivery and maybe we don't need a Monday to Friday anymore.

Sarah Canning: I think we have to remember that the people that are coming to Rebecca about jobs and flexible work are probably people that have recently graduated who want something different. And we have to think about how that's going to impact studies, how that's going to impact students, how it's impacting their lifestyle. Because Gen Alpha - that's my son's age - he's growing up seeing people in flexible work. So with that Gen Alpha coming through, we're going to see this as very much the norm.

So of course when they come into workplace then they're going to think it's very strange if people wear suits and they're in the office Monday to Friday 9-5, because they probably will literally never have seen that in a lot of ways. But how's that going to impact the way that they study and the way that they live? And we are already seeing this, the universities are trying hybrid ways of working, but the PBSA sector and probably university accommodation haven't worked out a way to make that work.

And a lot of it is we're beholden to technology. There are systems and also planning doesn't allow for flexible contracts for part-time students to live in accommodation. That's part of why I think we haven't moved quickly enough is that we are being held back by certain restrictions, certain red tape, particularly around technology and planning.

That means that while students might want to study flexibly, at the moment that leaves a massive hole in: where are they going to live? Why would they pay for accommodation if you're only on campus three days a week, where do they live the rest of the time? Can they come on campus three days a week, one week and two days a week the next and live there and still have an amazing experience? And equally what if you want to do a three month degree or a two year degree, but the contracts just don't align and the technology doesn't.

So I'll throw that out there. Are we actually - to Deenie's point - really dinosaurs in this situation and it's too far away to meet those demographic requirements?

Richard Stott: Funnily enough, I just had the word, "I'm a dinosaur." I'm just thinking about our summer repair schedule where we ban holidays during the summer repairs - I hope they're not watching this - because we just don't do flexible hours. And I'm sure AI is going to change things and we're open to change and reinventing ourselves. We always seem to do in our sector, which is a vibrant sector, hence we're all sat around the table because we love it so much - but it's going to change.

I do feel the other word 'dinosaur' is in my head. "I'm a dinosaur!" I fully agree.

Dan Smith: I think you can look at this from two perspectives, the staffing level and the student level. So from a staffing level, I mean when I was at Nido, we didn't really have any holidays allowed in August and it wasn't something that I mandated. It was just something that, well, if you come to me for approval, I'm going to make you question that. Is that the right time for you to be going away? Well, yes, there's certain reasons why I would allow that, but I think there's a lot of operators that say, no, sorry, no holidays during August.

And that flexibility hasn't been shown massively from what I can see in all of the work that I've done with clients both on the ESG front and on the student housing front. And I think that that is something that definitely needs to improve. We do need to look at more flexibility for our staff, but the investors will and the operators, they are still very much looking at that NOI. Okay, what's that going to do if I have to get covered during August? If I have to basically make up for the fact that someone is doing a four day week, how does that then impact the balance sheet? I think that's one key problem.

And then from a student side of things, I do feel like we're moving towards an era of flex. Now when we bought two properties in Liverpool for Nido, to be honest - and actually Richard…

Richard Stott: Thank you!

Dan Smith: I was just going to say we didn't actually know what to do with them because they were townhouses, et cetera. But yeah, Richard, I'm sure you did quite well out of that. Kexgill then went on to buy them, but ultimately we struggled with what we should do in terms of: do we have 51 weeks, 43 weeks? Now what we did was we split them up into semesters because we knew that there was a strong semester market. The Chinese market in particular was very good for semesters and we saw Unite Students doing that as well at the same time in Liverpool.

And so I think when some of those markets are showing real signs of maturity, they look towards more flex. By that I mean allowing for semesters now, then allowing for short stay. And I think that that's something… I've just seen a flex report by Lavanda and they're not a client, just to put that out there, but I want to just draw attention to the fact that I do think we're moving towards that era of flex for students.

So we're starting to think, hang on, what do they need? They want flexibility. They'd like to move out as and when they want. Well, that's not good for operators. And we've also then seen that in Ireland for example, and also across various other places in the UK, operators are taking a view on not having a summer. So they're saying, "Right, we're just going to do 51 weeks because it's easier, it's less hassle, no turnaround, don't have to worry about occupancy over there. We don't have to get some of the various short stay providers in."

I think that's a real challenge. Now in Ireland, they're actually just mandating - and I was given a sneak preview of the fact - that the Irish government are now mandating that they have to run PBSA properties on 43 week contracts. And that is then going to be a struggle for various different operators to then say, "Right, okay, well we've got rent caps in place now we've got to make sure that we've got 43 weeks, we're going to have voids over the summer. How do we deal with that?"

On the flip side of that, in the UK we've got a massive shortage of summer accommodation for language schools, et cetera. So I think there's a lot of challenges that flex will throw up. I do think that any operator that is student focused, student centric will start offering more flex, but that will come at a cost, probably a financial cost in terms of the total revenue and the annual occupancy across the course of the year.

Jenny Shaw: Yeah, I mean we've been talking about flexible tendencies for at least 10 years in the sector as far as I know. And just, the change won't come until the change comes. And when we get to that tipping point, I mean the way that degrees are structured is still extremely traditional. I mean there's potential for more flexibility in the future, but we're a few years off, and I think as long as we're ready to be a flexible sector that can respond to what's actually happening in the market, I think we'll be okay. But it's going to be a change and we've just got to be ready for it.

Laura Bosworth: It takes for somebody to need it though, doesn't it? If the occupancy is there and if the scarcity in the student's mind is there - which comes from the way that certain buildings are marketed, the way that universities set up their agreements with private operators - but until they need to make that change, I don't think universities are going to…

Sarah Canning: That's happening, Laura. And it's being hidden from the data. I'll tell you this for a fact, that in all buildings when there's 51 week contracts, the students are asking for tenancy takeovers. And yes, you can say we don't do that, but the staff are trying to help. They're trying to be kind and they're trying to help these students find tenants to replace them over the summer.

Now that's probably not getting reported on back to investors because as far as they're concerned, they've sold a 51 week contract and that flex that's being demanded by the student, they're signing up to 51 week contracts because in a lot of cities, there's no choice. They don't want a 51 week contract. And then the impact on that is back on the staff who are not only trying to turn a building around over the summer, they're then trying to deal with tenancy takeovers. They're trying to sell for the following year and they're having to do summer business. It's absolutely crazy.

Laura Bosworth: Who's brought their prices down over the years and sold a 51 week for - it'll say 51 on the tenancy, but actually the rent reflected is the equivalent of say, a 45 week because they want have that 51 week, but the students don't necessarily want it.

Dan Smith: So are we moving into an era of affordability whereby there's more flex the students can almost move out as and when they want or they can have semesters, and I'm loathe to mention this, but the only party that looked at a potential two-year degree course was Reform. And I know, apologies, everybody around the room is wincing. Obviously Labour were very tight-lipped on their plans for university funding and affordability issues.

But yeah, that two year degree course, it may be that the universities have to start thinking along the lines of, right, what can we do to make university more affordable? I think that is a can that they have kicked down the road for quite some time because why would you shorten your degree courses when you're already strapped for cash? But that is something that we may be able to see. So we may be on the verge of an era of more affordability, but there's obviously a lot of challenges that go with that as well.

I mean, from a building perspective, the way I see it, the more beds you build, the more affordable the accommodation becomes. Just look at Coventry for example, and the average rent there and the difference between there and Bristol and Glasgow, and we are on that verge of pricing students out going to certain locations, but it is really challenging to build at the moment. It's challenging to buy. You have the sales agents saying, yeah, go and buy in Coventry. It's absolutely fine there. There's an under supplier and they're not looking at the right data.

Richard Ward at Stu Rents has just done some really good work on the data that they're actually using and bringing in HMO data and what the students are studying, are they staying at home, et cetera. And obviously the sales agents are going to say, "Buy and build in Coventry," or that "Everything's looking rosy. We're thinking it's going to be a really good q4."

I'm not convinced. Most of the investors that I talked to are saying, well, they were saying it was "Survive until '25" and then "Fixed by '26" and now it's "Heaven in '27" is the next key theme. But does that mean we have to wait that long for a significant number of beds?

Laura Bosworth: It's not marketers coming up with those lines, is there?

Dan Smith: No, no, it's definitely not. It's definitely investors.

But yeah, I think that the challenge that we have with cost of build, cost of capital, cost of acquisition, et cetera, that is the biggest barrier at the moment that we've got to actually to build it. I mean then you throw in fire regs, Building Safety Act, et cetera. You're adding 15 months to a build programme according to Sue Churchill at Church Lucas.

Now, there are so many issues now with regards to getting those beds built that I think affordability is becoming something that ultimately I think governments have and potentially will try to mandate, just look at the Greater London Authority and the affordability mandates there. It may be that the mayoralties all go for that and that spreads out across the UK, and therefore we don't end up seeing the breadth of beds that we want to be built.

So I do think there are still quite a few challenges to get to that really affordable student accommodation that we want across universities because universities tend to follow the private sector. Private sector have driven the rents up. Universities are quite happy to follow that and say, "Well, hey, they jumped first." Rebecca, you may disagree with that, but ultimately I think we've got some opportunities here to show affordability in certain ways, but there are so many barriers and challenges to that.

Deenie Lee: But there is a threshold when it comes to affordability, and I've said this before and Icontinue to say it's that the sector has to look after itself when it comes to affordability because you breach that threshold and go beyond that threshold, people just won't go to universities. They'll just say no.

Dan Smith: They'll vote with their feet.

Deenie Lee: Yeah, and I just think that - whilst yes, if the sector doesn't change, governments will have to go and do something about it - a smart sector would go, "Hang on a minute, we need to do something about it," because it's just not maintanable.

Dan Smith: But I think that does come with occupancy in particular now I'm getting a lot of calls from people in Nottingham, in Leeds, and people thinking about the future of Bristol as well as to the number of beds that are popping up there. The fact that the likelihood is their occupancy will drop and genuinely just look at Sheffield, Coventry, times when Liverpool and Newcastle have been the same in the past where that occupancy's dropped. What's the first thing to go? Well, you give out big offers. I remember giving away £1,500 cashback to get someone into a room late on in the market in Newcastle. That was when Newcastle was pretty tough.

Now you wouldn't need to do that. So it is all cyclical. But I do think that there's definitely going to be that opportunity for students to ultimately have an affordable education, affordable accommodation, because we build that many beds that ultimately those costs end up coming down and then it becomes a survival of the fittest. And that's what you want. That's what you want from at the moment, we're still shooting fish in a barrel to a certain extent. Every operator in Coventry would disagree with that, but most markets it is still going to be pretty reasonably easy to get to a hundred percent occupancy.

Laura Bosworth: I think that a lot of operators think that it's old hand, they know what they're doing. And just what you were saying there about that cashback, there's so many of my clients that bring us in because they're doing the same thing every year and they've got a strategy and it gets rewritten. And by that I mean they change the date at the top and the date that it was sent to the client. And that's literally all that happens.

And if something new comes out from UCAS for accommodation for students, a new service, a clearing thing, they'll pop it in because if somebody's doing it, they want to do it as well. And that's kind of the only thing that changes. But then we've got the data that says that every cohort is different because they're people and they're, and every generation is different, so why aren't we changing the way that we're communicating with them as well?

It's not just about the affordability and well, it's a big part about that, but how the occupancy side, like you say, they will vote, they'll talk with their feet. I'm so pleased that you mentioned StuRents bringing in HMOs because HMOs are massive and when Newcastle went through that a huge challenge a couple of years ago, there's huge HMOs there as well, and everybody's going, "Oh, where are all the students going?"

Dan Smith: Well, they're in Jesmond.

Laura Bosworth: Well, yeah, they're all in Jesmond in a £50 a week house because they don't see the value because you haven't updated your marketing strategy to tell them what you're offering when your prices are very high, but you are offering them discounts under the table, which isn't visible to anybody else. And I think that those operators are kind of dinosaurs when it comes to that side of things.

And I think that's definitely an area that we need to be challenging ourselves on being a bit more honest on. And if we were more transparent and doing things that weren't under the table and including stuff in the data, like you said earlier, Sarah, we could move forward.

Deenie Lee: I mean we've got three marketers around this table and we've talked a lot about what's coming down the road and there's flex, there's changes in contracts, then there's short term contracts, there's changes in what students want.

We've talked about, are we communicating the right things to students, but do we have the right breadth of experience in marketing? Do we have the right budgets to support that marketing change? And how do we actually market when all that's coming aboard when we probably do often have a sector that doesn't really value the role of marketing in actually what they're trying to achieve and what their objectives are. Rebecca?

Rebecca O'Hare: That's quite interesting, Deenie, actually, because within the universities, some universities there are marketing teams with a centralised approach, but at Leeds it's decentralised. So we have our own marketing person within the facilities directorate who works closely at residential services and they've been with us for a number of years. So they really start to understand the sector and understand actually what our service needs to communicate, the breadth and depth of accommodation that we have and how to communicate individual buildings and things like that.

But you see in other universities where I've got colleagues working where they don't have that individual person or a team, people support them working so closely with them and they really struggle to communicate to central marketing to say, "We need you to help us with X" or to help them understand that. So I think, yeah, there probably isn't that experience or understanding of that expertise that you're talking about like you, Sarah and Laura will have.

Jenny Shaw: There's also an issue who you to. Because I think we often think that we're marketing to students, which we are - they're the purchaser - but what about parents? And that's something I think about a lot because a lot of what we do is very much about the support side and the inclusion and safety and so on, which is probably going to mean more to the parents than the students. So whose hearts and minds are trying to capture in that?

Laura Bosworth: I did think that when we were talking about the four day week. I was thinking, I wonder what a parent coming to the or coming to open day and talking to the accommodation, and saying, "Are you going to be here when my child moves in?" That was always a question when we had a new mobilising building and there'd be somebody that had been hired to sell basically and then the manager would be hired later because their salary was more expensive and they didn't want to bring them on until the building was very ready.

And that's changing a lot now because I think there is an understanding that you are selling to the parents as well as the student. And although the student probably cares, they don't want to show that they care, but the parent is quite happy to say, are you going to be here? So yeah, that's really interesting.

Richard Stott: I think a lot of what's been said is about PBSA, and you've got to take into account a returning student - they've already been there a couple of months before we pick them off. They actually, some of them, don't want live in PBSA. You mentioned Newcastle, you might advertise it for the world. They do not want to be in a big hall, they want to be in a house in Jesmond, and I can't do anything to change it. And that is their preference and they see the studentification of that area. So I want to be there, I want my own house.

Sarah Canning: I think that's one of the biggest failings of PBSA. I don't think we've been able to compete with HMOs, and like you said, there are certain markets that whatever way you look at it, that lure of a house is the thing that drives them.

And me and Deenie with our clients, we do talk about it, and part of the failing of the sector I think is that we talk about rooms. I still don't know why we're talking about rooms. Do you want to live in a room? I don't want to live in a room and I definitely don't want to pay £13,000 a year to live in a room. I want to live in a home and it's not just a room.

And I think the sector is underplaying it, and because everybody uses the terminology "room" and everybody else has to use the terminology "room" because then everybody has to compare like for like, but it's not a "room". You're in a flat. Whether that's a studio flat or whether that's in a cluster flat, you're in a flat. You have access to a kitchen, a living room, a dining area, you have an en suite, you have a front door. But we're not marketing it like that. And the design isn't really supporting that way of living either.

So I do think that there's a whole way that the PBSA sector could compete with HMOs in a much better way and try and open up the potential of living in the PBSA to somebody that would normally go and live in an HMO. And it's something that Deenie and I would love to get the wider sector on. And Laura, maybe that's something that the three of us can work on and brainstorm and try and move that terminology on.

Laura Bosworth: Yeah, I agree. I've had a very long probably weeks long debate with a client a couple of years ago about the term "cluster" and should we use the term "cluster". And I was talking about it from the perspective of, "What's what the student understands because all of the other operators are using."

It comes down to rooms as well. When you're marketing your prices, some say bronze, silver, gold, some say standard, and they have different room names and stuff, don't they? How are students comparing them? And this is the problem with HMOs, they do get a house - but sometimes they come out of it with a bit of an odd experience because of the bill situation. And we've had campaigns in the past where we've tried to do a comparison. There's nothing wrong with living in an HMO, but it's just about trying to, it's not just a room in a PBSA, it's more than that.

The terminology - I would love to get into that and have that whole big debate. But sorry, just adding onto that as well. We've asked students and I'm sure everybody around the table has as well, why did they book with us in the first place? So we went on to specifically ask at the end as well. We looked at why you said you booked. So if it was because you had a gym, because you had a pool, I really liked something specific about it. If it was the gym, I think it was like 10% of the people that said, oh, I booked it because you had a gym, have actually used it.

So I think getting to grips with what they think they want and what they actually want is quite interesting. But putting that, holding the mirror up to them. I don't know how to do that. Nobody wants that, do they? So I dunno how to say "This is what we think you want based on what you said."

Deenie Lee: I'm just coming back to challenge Richard who said, "I can't do anything about that I want to live in HMOs. I can't do anything about that." Actually, as a sector, that's exactly what we can do something about - is that you take the market research, you take the gap in the market, and you've built something that meets that gap and that need. And I think we've just got a bit complacent.

Richard Stott: I would agree. We're kind of a hybrid.

Deenie Lee: I going to say, I mean I was saying you are not actually, you are doing that.

Richard Stott: Back in the day, 15 years ago, our most successful advert was "Come and live with your mates in our house and you get a party pack," and the party pack was a whole load of booze in the game of Twister. The game of Twister always clinched the deal and that works. And then at the end they're all moving in, they're all picking up the party packs. That game of Twister. That was proper marketing. We don't do that anymore now. Well, we did.

Dan Smith: I think we've got a lot of work to do to break that well-trodden path for domestic students in particular whereby first year you're typically in university halls. Second year you've met five, six mates and you go into an HMO. I still think that's the case. I think we've got probably another 10, 15 years before we can break that. And I know that the previous government were trying to bring in the Renter's Reform Bill, which was likely to see more HMO student properties come back to market or go back to general housing because it would be more prohibitive for them.

But breaking that well-trodden path is really, really difficult for domestic students and that is the holy grail. Now, I have seen more marketing more recently from various different operators of all sizes in really competitive HMO markets. So the likes of your Birmingham or your Newcastle, Liverpool, et cetera, where it's literally like - you could live in HMO: X, X, X, X, X against a load of different criteria, or you could live in PBSA - it's amazing! Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

And I do think that that's what we still need to be reinforcing because there is an alternative to HMO and it's not necessarily that that's better, but I think that we've got to get better at showcasing what the strengths are of PBSA against HMO and Richard, obviously you can do both effectively, and I think that I've got a lot of clients as well that have HMOs or they might even have their own HMOs and then they have PBSA.

And I do think that it's finding that happy between bastardising HMOs and really singing the praises of PBSA. Well, no, there's a right fit for each person. You've just got to be really clear about what the benefits are and how we can showcase that to the student. Because ultimately you want the student to have a really good time. If they're not right for PBSA, that's fine. Whether that's affordability, whether that's a social side of things, whatever or location, whatever it is.

I think we've just got to make sure that we are looking after the students first and foremost, but communicating to them on their terms. HMO is this, PBSA, is this, being really clear about it. But I'm seeing the lines blur more and more and the bill splitting or the bill aggregating rather, the likes of UniHomes are doing that for the HMO market whereby students just have one payment taken away, all the hassle.

And also then so you've got your rent payment, then one bill payment, et cetera, that's blurring the line between then PBSA and HMO, it's closing the gap on the cost. So there's definitely some kind of hybrid model that I think we'll start to see more and more.

Laura Bosworth: I think it'll look different as well. That leaflet, I can visualise so many of them, it's going to change instead of HMO, no gym; PBSA, gym, it's going to be things like pastoral support and things like that. And I'm hoping that students would appreciate that because that's the feedback that comes through that they want more of that community and that support. And I think that's what operators, that's what they're able to provide now and that's what our client, I'm seeing the word 'wellness' a lot. Not a bad thing.

Dan Smith: As I'm sure Jenny is very much so.

Jenny Shaw: Very much so.

Dan Smith: And a lot of the work that you are doing at Unite Students, you're communicating really openly with the rest of the sector and I think that's really appreciated from a sustainability standpoint, but also diversity, equality, inclusion, and the general wellbeing of the students. I think the more we can have our largest PBSA operator doing that, leading the sector, I think, the better.

Jenny Shaw: That's what we're trying to do. If it benefits all students, that's what we want. We've talked about lots of different things. We've gone all over the sector and I think put the world to rights. But just to finish up, shall we have a quickfire round and go around each of us say, what do you think is just the biggest thing that's going to affect our sector over the coming years?

Richard Stott: The biggest thing for me - Jenny and I come from the same town, same city. We're born in the same city, very close to each other. The fact that we are sat here is because we left and went to university. If people don't have that rite of passage, it makes the people we are now and it's such a shame. We've got to get affordability right, and I'm really passionate about it because we carry on upping our rent. It's killing the market.

Dan Smith: For me, it's affordability. It has to be, we can't be pricing out students from going to university in any particular city or any particular country.

Laura Bosworth: Without a doubt, I agree. Affordability. But I just need to say, I think finding a balance between in real life and tech, I think there's a really fine line there. And I always talk about this with real and with local life about doing things in the real world and having real relationships, getting out of your room or maybe even just into your apartment or into the social spaces or just living in the real world rather than just having the tech. I think it's a fine line. I think that's going to be massive in terms of what the actual offer is.

Sarah Canning: I think the biggest impact for the future in the sector and we might sleepwalk into it, I think will be flexibility. And I do think that potentially the new government will be a champion of more flexible degrees and apprenticeships and I don't think the sector is quite geared up for it, whether that be technology or whether that be the product or whether that be communications. So I think that would be the biggest lesson really, is to think about how you can prepare for that. Because I think it's coming.

Deenie Lee: Unsurprisingly Sarah and I agree. I was going to say the same is that actually I think we've seen exponential growth in technology and the way that young people live their lives and that is going to have an impact on how they want to study, how they want to do their education. And it's not necessarily going to be about going to get a degree in a university. It could be about doing an apprenticeship degree. And I think that exponential change that is coming fast towards the sector, they're not prepared for. And I think that's one of the big challenges.

Jenny Shaw: So I'm going to answer my own question before I give the last word to Rebecca. I think one to watch for is the demand and the need for more inclusion and potentially a bit more a personalised approach to tenancies and the service. I think that could creep up on us and we need to be ready to respond to that.

Rebecca O'Hare: It'd be no surprise that I totally agree with Jenny's point there. I think there is an educational opportunity to teach the powers that be - investors, key decision makers in the sector, who really drive it and create change - about what intersectionality really is, what it is in practise, and to help them understand what true inclusion is.

So it's not a tick the box exercise, so that we really can work towards that equitable experience for all students and staff who work in our buildings. And I think once we get to that point, or at least move at a quicker pace towards that, that can help us achieve many of the points that some of you've raised today.

Jenny Shaw: And that's a wrap. I do hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did. Do check out the Housed podcast presented by Sarah, Deenie and Dan and Get Real About Marketing presented by Laura. And while you're at it, have a listen to the archives of Rebecca's Free Food, Free Drinks podcast. It's still very relevant.

And of course, if you're not subscribed to Accommodation Matters already, you know what you have to do. We are back soon with our August episode, but in the meantime, stay strong, stay hydrated, and you take care.

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