Student housing space may grow at 36% CAGR till 2023

Inventory, or the number of beds in the student housing segment, is likely to grow at the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36 per cent during 2019-2023, according to a report on Thursday.

"Tapping this gap, the top 30 players in the student housing/co-living space offered over 2,50,000 beds as of August," said a joint report by the real estate consultancy firm CBRE and the Student Accommodation Provider Association of India (SAPFI).

As per the report, the current stock is spread across several tier I and II cities.

Over $700 million investment has been committed in the student housing and co-living segment by firms like Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital, Goldman Sachs and HDFC.

The changing expectations of students, however, and the increase in competition were likely to affect the market price for assets and drive up rents, it said.

"As the rental housing market in India remains unorganised and opaque, quality and trust issues are top challenges that both landlords and tenants face," it said.

Commenting on the report, Anindya Dutta, MD and Co-Founder, student housing company Stanza Living said: "We believe, the student housing sector has the potential to grow 3x over the next decade. However, it is a largely unorganized sector that suffers from significant infrastructure and service quality gaps. Despite its high potential, the sector hadn't witnessed any fundamental disruption, leaving millions of students dependent on housing facilities of various standards."

The report observed that most of the operators in co-living or student housing segments are not only active across major cities but also have a presence in educational hubs such as Dehradun, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Indore, Vadodara, Jalandhar and Kota. These cities have a greater number of migrant students than most other cities, thus showing their scope for student accommodation, it said.

It said that developing private-public partnerships (PPP) would benefit the industry by bringing industry expertise to government-mandated projects.IANS