The second edition of the BONARD Blog Series gives an overview of the student housing pipeline in Europe in 2021 and beyond. For more details or to schedule a complimentary consultation, please contact data@bonard.com.

Over 246,000 private PBSA beds in total are due to come onto the European market in the future across the monitored cities.

Although the Covid-19 crisis impacted the real estate market in 2020, investors’ appetite for the PBSA asset class remained stable. From the information available, it is assumed that in 2021 and beyond the highest number of beds added anywhere in Continental Europe will be seen in Germany, followed by Spain and France.

In the UK, up to 30,000 new beds are expected to be on the market by the end of 2021. In comparison with Continental Europe, the UK remains a strong market, with an almost 40% market share of the new PBSA developments announced for Europe.

The Iberian and Apennine peninsulas remain the ongoing focus of institutional investors. An emerging interest in the CEE market can be seen in the rising number of developments in Polish cities.

In Continental Europe, development remains greatest in the Greater Paris region, with a total of 12,000 known beds to come onto the market in the coming years.

Traditional university cities in the UK as well as across Continental Europe are seeing a continuous pipeline boom. The average private provision rate for Continental Europe remains relatively in favour of developments, at 27%. Emerging markets in the CEE region are aptly described as opportunistic, with an average 17% provision rate of private stock.

On the basis of the experience, a total development value of more than €14 billion is assumed. The future transaction value of recent known developments, given the average transaction value per bed, may be over €28 billion.

Methodology Disclaimer: Only aggregated data from privately-funded projects in selected cities were used. The interactive map content offers the number of known developments and available bed capacities across selected cities. The final number of beds may be higher than indicated.
Data as of March 2021.

Read more on student housing in our latest Student Housing Annual Report 2020 here: