The student accommodation rental investment business in Spain is less developed than countries like the UK, but investment opportunities are growing as the market evolves, reveals new research from Uniplaces, a student accommodation portal.
Student accommodation offers gross returns of 4.7% according to figures from the Bank of Spain, cited in the Spanish press. That makes it one of the better rental investments in Spain, base on gross yield. It also beats the return on bank deposits by a significant margin.
Uniplaces compared rental prices in cities with big universities and large student populations like Madrid and Barcelona, focusing their research on rental accommodation best suited to students. At the most expensive end they found that students sharing a flat in Madrid pay an average of €400 per month, compared to €380 per month in Barcelona, €293 in Palma de Mallorca, and €272 in Seville.
At the other extreme, among the cheapest university cities for student accommodation are Granada with €197 a month for a room in a shared flat, Murcia with €272 a month, and Cordoba – where it costs an average of €200. In the middle of table other university cities can be found such as Zaragoza (€273 a month), Málaga (€266), Alicante (€250), Salamanca (€244), Valencia (€233) and Cadiz (€233).
Summer is the season when students start to look for somewhere to live during the coming academic year, and enquiries shoot up. For example, enquiries for Barcelona and Madrid made via the Uniplaces portal have gone up by 120 per cent over the last two months compared to March and April this year. However, the city that has seen the highest increase is Valencia, where enquiries have risen over 200 per cent in the last two months.
In terms of nationalities, the French, Italian, Colombians, Germans, and Mexicans make the most enquiries about student accommodation in the Catalan capital Barcelona. In Madrid, the list is led by Italians, Mexicans, Portuguese, French, and Venezuelans. In Valencia, Venezuelans, North Americans, Italians, French, and British make the most enquiries.