From student halls to shared accommodation.

The opportunities for further education seem to grow year on year despite the burden of student loans and the need to pay for your education, unlike my day when university education was both free and students received a grant from the local authority to cover ones living expenses.

I was lucky enough to attend Cardiff University and like many my first year was in Halls of Residence.

A room with shared facilities, either providing fully catered or self-catered accommodation.

Sporting facilities were provided on site with common rooms, communal gardens, a bar, cycle storage facilities and parking for those lucky enough to own their own vehicle.

What you have is one big communal facility catering for several hundred to several thousand students.

Typically due to a lack of campus owned accommodation, the remainder on one’s course would then be within the private sector renting with fellow students in a four to six or larger shared house.

Following graduation, many former students are drawn to where the jobs are which is typically within the cities and few will return back to Stroud.

Graduates often source fresh rented accommodation, again sharing as this is both affordable, social and what students are used to.

So how does this differ back home?

What we find in Stroud is quite the opposite.

Very few appear to want to share.

We have a greater demand for couples seeking a self-contained unit or singles wanting to rent by themselves a one bedroom flat.

I think this is drawn from the fact that if you have never shared, and those from Stroud not given that opportunity of attending further education outside the area keep to what they are used to, namely, seeking their own privacy and becoming over cautious about living within a shared environment.

Maybe because of the concerns of sharing with people you do not know.

A similar stance is seen with local Landlords who are skewed away from renting to sharers.

They hear the horror stories or may recall their own student days where student houses were both of a poor standard and poorly maintained by those living within them.

Yes I would agree that living standards for sharers can become the standard of the laziest occupier.

Though things can and are changing.

On my next market comment in a months’ time, I will talk about the options that the market are providing for young people as opportunities have opened up to provide accommodation to meet the changing needs.