Daily news archive

University property still top dog

22 October, 2007

With thousands of students settling back in at university it seems many of them have already had enough of student digs. Abbey has found that 154,000 students – 14 per cent of the current student population – still hope to purchase a property in their university town, despite warnings of a house price cool. That’s on top of the 88,000 who already live in their own place at university.

A huge 66,000 of today’s students want to buy a place on their own, while a further 44,000 have parents who are thinking about it. Another 44,000 are thinking about clubbing together with friends to buy a property.

Of the 88,000 who already live in their own place, three-quarters of them have bought on their own or with friends, and one-quarter live in properties that their parents have bought for them to stay in.

Nici Audhlam Gardiner, head of mortgages at Abbey, commented: “Britain’s student population continues to be a source of income for buy-to-let property investors, many of whom are parents of the students or the students themselves.

“The key issue with any mortgage, but a buy-to-let one in particular, is affordability. People considering it need to make sure that they can afford the mortgage payments plus any maintenance costs, service charges and down-time between tenancies that they will also need to cover.”