Social Infrastructure · Student accommodation

What fills a student block — and what it earns

Purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) is a rental-yield play with a powerful demand driver: a fixed pool of students chasing beds near campus. Revenue is simply beds × weekly rent × occupancy, and because you heat, staff and maintain the whole building whether the rooms are full or not, the cost base is largely fixed — so every empty bed is lost rent that falls straight to the bottom line. The case turns on the size of the portfolio, the rent you can push, and how full you keep it.

5,000
£200
97%
LIVE
Let room a student in, paying rent Void room empty — lost rent vs fixed costs Common room study & social space Rent & ancillary collected at reception
Flows — annualised from current assumptionsper year
Revenue p.a.
£0
£0 / hr
EBITDA p.a.
£0
0% margin
Rent / bed · week
£0
blended
Beds let
0
97% occupancy
Stocks — what the flows accumulate intolive
Beds let now
0
of 5,000 beds
EBITDA banked · session
£0
accumulating in real time
Implied enterprise value
£0
at 19× EBITDA
Where revenue comes from Total £0 p.a.
Accommodation
Ancillary
Why investors like PBSA: demand is counter-cyclical and structural — student numbers tend to hold up (or rise) in a downturn, leases are short so rents reset to the market every year, and bills are bundled so income is inflation-protected. Add high, sticky occupancy near good universities and you get a resilient, growing real-estate annuity that trades on a keen yield. The risk is local oversupply: because costs are fixed, occupancy and rent are what move the return.
Revenue streams£0 p.a.
Operating costs£0 p.a.
Investment case — should you buy it?DCF returns

Year-1 financials flow live from the simulation above: revenue £0 and EBITDA £0 p.a. Set your deal terms below — the unlevered IRR (asset return) and levered IRR (return to equity, after debt) recompute instantly.

Operating

%
%
%
%
%
%

Valuation & hold

×
×
y

Financing

×
%
%
Unlevered IRR
—
asset / project return
Levered IRR
—
return to equity
Equity multiple
—
MOIC over hold
Equity gain
—
exit equity − invested
Equity cash-flow profile£m · ■ invested   ■ returned
Projection — £m per year

Illustrative model. Represents a purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) portfolio. Revenue = beds × weekly rent × occupancy over a ~51-week academic-year contract, plus ancillary income (summer lettings & conferences, services). Operating costs (staffing & security, utilities, maintenance & cleaning, marketing & lettings, a management fee and insurance & rates) are dominated by per-bed running costs that are largely fixed against occupancy — so every void bed is lost rent against a standing cost base. EBITDA (net operating income) = revenue − operating costs; excludes upfront development/acquisition cost. The investment case is a simplified DCF on a yield asset. For illustration only — not investment advice, and not any specific asset.