Those heading back to university may be surprised to hear that they are helping the economy in more than one way, as house prices in 60 per cent of university towns have seen growth outperform their regions in the past five years1. The interesting correlation is that the biggest increases have happened in the towns which have seen the largest jump in student numbers, such as Aberdeen in Scotland.
As students need places to live whilst they are at university, some people choose to buy homes in order to provide a buy-to-let solution for private rentals. As mentioned previously, Aberdeen has seen a house price gain of almost 40 per cent, compared to the smaller 14 per cent across the rest of Scotland. With a rise of 54 per cent in the student population, it is easy to understand what is behind the spectacular increase.
Nitesh Patel, a housing economist, said: “Growing student numbers have had a big impact in boosting house prices in some university towns where the increase in demand has led to the local market outperforming the rest of the region.”
The same thing has happened in Winchester, where house prices have risen by 30 per cent in comparison to a 2.5 per cent overall growth in the South East. This is because student numbers in Winchester have rocketed by a massive 78 per cent. In fact, the average house price here is £385,713 – 114 per cent above the UK average of £180,501!
Patel added: “In the past five years population across the university towns in UK has increased by nearly a million students. Naturally, this has boosted demand for property and land to provide suitable accommodation for students.” So despite some people moaning and groaning about the number of university students taking over their town centre; it is easy to see that the benefits outweigh the “negatives”!
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