Is the United Kingdom’s purpose-built student accommodation market in trouble?

In its latest UK Student Accommodation report, released in October 2025, Cushman & Wakefield has suggested falling international postgraduate demand and affordability issues are putting pressure on purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) assets to fill beds in many parts of the United Kingdom.

The firm has put the spotlight on Sheffield as a perfect example of the market pressures some PBSA operators are now dealing with. Between the 2022–2023 and 2024–2025 academic years, demand for modern student housing in the “Steel City” fell by 17.3 percent. This has resulted in an unprecedented student-to-bed ratio for a major European market of 1.21:1, down from 1.46:1. It has also led to the largest decrease in PBSA rents in the United Kingdom this year, at –5.5 percent. Other cities have gone through a similar slump. Nottingham and Leeds, says Oliver Cummings, head of PB