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Purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA), halls and studios let to students for the academic year. The demand-driven outlier in social infrastructure: not a contracted availability PPP but operational real estate, where revenue is occupancy × rent. That means genuine demand and re-letting risk, and an annual letting cycle, but also rental growth and operating leverage. Pick a real operator below and follow it through the building, the model and a working returns model.
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Drag the sliders to see what earns the money, the number of beds, the rent each pays per week, and how fully the building is let. Lit windows are occupied rooms; the lit fraction is the occupancy.
Purpose-built student accommodation is operational real estate, not an availability PPP. You build and own the halls and let beds to students, so revenue is occupancy × rent, beds let, the rent each pays per week, over the tenancy weeks of the academic year. That makes it the demand-driven outlier in social infrastructure: there is genuine demand and re-letting risk, re-priced every year in the annual letting cycle, unlike a PPP whose revenue is contracted. In return there is rental growth (PBSA has had strong rent growth where supply lags student numbers) and operating leverage, much of the running cost is fixed, so a full building earns a high NOI margin while a soft letting year compresses it. Nomination agreements, where a university block-books beds for a multi-year term, provide a partial contracted floor; the balance is direct-let, carrying the demand risk but capturing the upside. PBSA trades on tight cap rates, so the exit is a high multiple of stabilised NOI.
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See also the Student accommodation simulator, model a single scheme through its letting cycle, and the Cash-flow & DCF model.