Emily Aduah, Director of Analysis at StudentCrowd, speaks ahead of her appearance at the Student Housing Conference 2026. Drawing on one of the sector’s most comprehensive student review and data sets, Emily shares what the numbers are really telling us — and why the industry needs to listen more carefully to the student voice.
The student housing market has been through significant change. What are the biggest shifts you’re seeing right now?
I think we are seeing the end of the easy growth era. In previous years, high demand meant you could succeed in many markets with what you could call a fairly mediocre product — the demand was there, so it looked all right. But what we saw in 2025–26 was a real shift across a lot of dimensions.
One of the indicators we track closely is incentives — this tells us a lot about how markets are responding to changes in student behaviour, and what operators are doing with their strategies to fill beds. We saw a significant numerical shift in 2025–26 that is clearly visible in our data. To give you a concrete example: Coventry has been a challenging environment for a few years and has consistently shown high incentive levels — that was broadly expected behaviour. But in 2025–26, three cities overtook Coventry in terms of the intensity of incentives: Sheffield, Cardiff and Brighton.
The minimal baseline we track for market coverage is around 20% — it goes up to around 80% in some cases. Several markets have started 2026–27 with historically high entry incentive rates. That tells you something important is shifting.
Is success in PBSA still all about location?
Traditionally, location topped the leaderboard — everyone knew they had to nail it. Build it in the right place and they will come. But the picture is changing.
We run an annual survey on StudentCrowd tracking student opinion and decision-making over time. Since 2022, the number one priority for students when choosing accommodation has consistently been value for money — not location. We saw that weighting spike sharply in 2024 as inflationary pressures and the cost of living reached their peak, with 83% of students citing value for money as one of their priorities when choosing accommodation.
Location is still there — it’s second place — but our review data tells us it isn’t the most important factor in practice. Students are willing to accept a less-than-perfect location in exchange for other benefits. A good example of this is Edinburgh, where our data shows students rating value for money around 0.5 stars higher than they rate the location — meaning they’re still satisfied overall, even though location is actually a detractor for them.
Beyond that, there’s a theme that comes up again and again in our data: staff and community. Based on more than 250,000 verified student reviews, the phrase “friendly staff” stands out as the most impactful phrase in our entire data set. It drives 95% positive reviews and strongly correlates with better wellbeing support, fairness, transparency, safety, responsiveness and overall accommodation quality. So no — I don’t think it’s all about location anymore. It’s about the product overall, and matching what students actually want from that experience.
How can the market better align itself with the student experience?
The first thing I would say is: you need better, more granular data. What is very clear is that you cannot make meaningful assumptions about the UK market from broad brushstrokes. There is enormous nuance — what’s happening in one city, one building, or even one room type can be entirely different from what’s happening in another. So you need local, granular data to understand what’s actually going on at that level.
The other thing I would say is: listen to the student voice. We talk a lot about numbers — beds, ratios, yields — but we are ultimately in the business of delivering an experience product. The end user has to be satisfied that what we’re offering is actually what they want.
Our data shows very clearly that a lonely building is a leaking building in terms of retention. After staff, the biggest universal loyalty driver is the community experience. Students want to be part of something — and that cuts across all property types, both university and private, across different nominations. Both of those drivers — staff and community — are relational and experiential, not physical. That said, I think it’s worth considering how the need for community might inform design choices when you’re refurbishing or developing a building. How do you build something that’s within budget — because students want value for money — but still meets that need to connect? Squaring that circle is one of the most fascinating challenges the sector faces right now.
If you could give one piece of unconventional advice to someone entering the student housing market today, what would it be?
Focus on building a reliable product. There are clear signals in our data of a shift in student narratives — moving from luxury to reliability. Students are under more financial and academic pressure than ever, and increasingly they view accommodation as a productivity tool, not just a lifestyle choice.
One review I pulled out recently talks about Wi-Fi cutting out at inconvenient times — like when a student needs to submit their essay. That says it all, really. Students are living their whole life in these buildings — studying, working part-time jobs, connecting socially — and the building needs to actively support all of that.
There is also a direct inverse correlation in our data between maintenance lead times and overall satisfaction. It’s very clear: if you install features, you need budget to maintain them. Otherwise they become brand detractors. There appear to be a large number of broken lifts sitting unrepaired in PBSA properties across the country — and students are absolutely paying attention to those things.
One thing I would also highlight is the booking and move-in process. Our data shows that students who have a positive experience of that early touchpoint are significantly more likely to express an interest in rebooking — just that period alone is that impactful.
But if I’m being direct about where to focus resources: invest in your staff. They are the makers of the student experience — by a long way, the number one thing students talk about in reviews. You can slice our data set any way you like, and you will see the word “staff” all the way through.
One of my favourite reviews — and it is, in its entirety, the whole review — simply reads: “Morgan may be the best man at my wedding one day. Big up Francis.” That single review tells you everything about the impact those two individuals had on that student’s experience. To give another example, we saw a staff member help a student navigate a lockout at 3am with a smile — and that one interaction neutralised a potential complaint about a dated room and turned it into a five-star review. That is the power of great staff.
Emily Aduah, Director of Analysis at StudentCrowd, is speaking at the Student Housing Conference 2026 at The Kia Oval, London on 7th May. Find out more at studenthousingevent.com