We estimate c. £25 billion for the market value of UK universities’ freehold residential estates The value of a university’s residential estate is informed by a large number of factors such as size, title and tenure, macro- and micro-location, quality and specification, amenity provision, and market conditions at the time of assessing value. One factor that has increased in weighting is fire safety: any issues associated with this can have a potentially significant impact on value, to account for remediation costs that are required for fire safety compliance. In addition, transactional evidence for university-owned residential assets is often very scarce, so to arrive at an estimate of the value that universities have tied up in existing student accommodation, a set of broad assumptions are required. To do this, for each university-owned residential asset in the UK, we have applied a simplified classification based on the location and credentials of the relevant PBSA market that would affect investor appetite, e.g. number of full-time students in the city, the ranking of the universities, and the supply and demand dynamics. We have excluded assets that form part of a private sector partnership, where we consider value as already ‘extracted’. We have then applied a very broad assumption of capital value per bed to the assets in each market based on available comparable evidence. Depending on location, our assumptions of capital value per bed range from £60,000 to £300,000 for assets ranked as Quality A or B, and between £25,000 to £180,000 for those ranked as Quality C or D. Reception at Unite Students’ Charlton Court, Bath Page 34 | SFG | Meeting demand for modernised university-owned accommodation