In London, the average student room now costs more than the maximum maintenance loan
Most students don't get the maximum loan — so the real affordability gap is larger than that headline comparison alone suggests.
In 2024/25, the average purpose-built student accommodation rent in London was £13,595 a year — £247 more than that year's maximum maintenance loan for a student living away from home in the capital, £13,348.
Rent vs the loan — same year, same city, and still not the whole story
The maximum loan is not what most students get
The £13,348 maximum loan requires household income at or below £25,000 — most students receive less than the maximum. HEPI's own, more representative figure compares London rent against the AVERAGE loan actually paid to students from outside London studying in the capital: a shortfall of £2,890 in 2024/25, up from £1,419 in 2022/23 — a larger and more typical gap than the "just missed the maximum" headline suggests.
The more representative gap is larger, not smaller
HEPI’s own comparison of London rent against the average loan actually paid to comparable students shows a shortfall of £2,890 in 2024/25 — up from £1,419 in 2022/23. The headline £247 gap against the maximum loan is the smaller of the two figures, not the larger.
Rent outside London — an older figure, not a same-year comparison
Average PBSA rent across ten regional English cities was £7,475 in 2023/24 — the most recent figure available for those cities.
This regional figure is a full academic year older than the London 2024/25 figure above and comes from a different HEPI/Unipol survey (the "Ten Cities" report) — no more recent regional survey has been published. Do not read this as a same-year comparison with the London figures.
The loan tiers
View as table
| Year | Tier | Annual amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | Maximum, away from home in London | £13,348 |
| 2024/25 | Maximum, away from home outside London | £10,227 |
| 2024/25 | Maximum, living at home | £8,610 |
| 2024/25 | Minimum, away from home outside London (highest household income) | £4,767 |
| 2024/25 | Minimum, living at home (highest household income) | £3,790 |
| 2025/26 | Maximum, away from home in London | £13,762 |
| 2025/26 | Maximum, away from home outside London | £10,544 |
| 2025/26 | Maximum, living at home | £8,877 |
Maximum vs typical
The maximum applies only at the lowest household-income band; the loan tapers down as household income rises, to the minimum shown. Most students receive an amount somewhere between the two, not the maximum.
Where the loan actually goes
The maintenance loan is paid in three instalments across the year, directly into the student's own UK bank account — never to a landlord, university or accommodation provider. A student decides how to divide it between rent, food, bills and everything else. "The loan doesn't cover the average room's rent" is a valid affordability point; "accommodation companies receive loan repayments" would not be — no PBSA provider is ever paid directly by the Student Loans Company.
Who owns student housing
Investors committed £4.3bn to the UK PBSA market in 2025, up 10% on the year before — commercial market research, not official statistics, and a measure of investment capital, not student affordability.
COMMERCIAL MARKET RESEARCH — not official statistics, and not directly comparable to rent or loan figures: this measures investment capital flowing into the PBSA property asset class, not affordability.
Knight Frank's own published £4.3bn (2025) and £3.87bn (2024) headline figures imply an 11.1% rise, not the "10%" also quoted in their release — both figures are genuinely Knight Frank's own, but the two absolute numbers and the percentage don't perfectly reconcile, most likely because the public headline figures round underlying unpublished precise ones independently. Reported here as published, not corrected.
Unite Students — the largest single operator
68,000 beds across 152 buildings. Listed on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE 250), REIT status since 1 January 2017. Adjusted earnings of £232.3m for the year to December 2025.
The largest single operator by scale. As a listed company, its financial disclosures are public and audited — this page reports only the headline figures the company itself publishes, not a profitability claim beyond what its own accounts state.
In London specifically, universities' own directly-held share of PBSA beds fell from 54% to 51% between 2022/23 and 2024/25, while their combined portfolios (own plus nominated private-partner stock) grew — private direct-let beds also grew over the same period.
What this does not show
Whether accommodation providers receive loan money directly
They do not. The maintenance loan is paid to the student, who then chooses how to spend it — described precisely above, not implied otherwise.
Profitability of PBSA operators generally
This page reports Unite Students' own published headline figures because it is a listed company with audited public accounts. It makes no profitability claim about private, unlisted operators, for whom audited figures of this kind are not readily available.
A single UK-wide comparable rent figure
London and the ten-regional-cities figures come from different HEPI/Unipol surveys, a year apart — this page keeps them separate rather than averaging them into one misleading national number.
Last verified 2026-08-31. Data: HEPI & Unipol, "Priced Out? The Accommodation Costs Survey 2024: London Edition" (HEPI Report 182).
Related pages
- In this sectionThe price of a degreeThe rest of this chapter.
- In this sectionThe student debt timelineHow the maintenance loan fits into overall borrowing.
- Leaves this sectionHousingThe wider housing-affordability picture this fits inside.
- In this sectionEducationThe other chapters, and how this section is built.
Scope and definitions
England, not the UK
Education is devolved. Every figure on this page is England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland operate different frameworks with different legal definitions, and their figures are not directly comparable.
Three different kinds of source, kept visibly separate
This page mixes official government figures (maintenance loans), independent research (HEPI/Unipol rent surveys), and commercial market research (Knight Frank investment data) — each labelled throughout, never blended into a single unlabelled number.