How much is student accommodation?

We all know rent gobbles up a huge chunk of Maintenance Loans – but which students have to fork out the most? And which gets the best deal? Use our table to find out.

Credit: David Iliff - Wikimedia

Rent costs are the bane of most students' lives. As soon as that Maintenance Loan drops in your account, the majority of it is likely to be hoovered up by rent costs pretty quickly.

But there's no denying some students have it worse off than others. Depending on which university you go to, the rent costs you'll face can differ drastically.

In our National Student Accommodation Survey 2024, we uncovered which students pay the most in rent. As is to be expected, the majority of universities with the highest costs are in London. However, some unis elsewhere in the country can have pretty expensive rents, too.

Find out where your university ranks on the rent chart.

Which universities have the highest rent?

In our latest accommodation survey, among those who pay rent, the average cost was £550 per month.

As you may expect, the uni where students spend the most on rent is based in London. With an average rent of £975 per month, London South Bank University was the most expensive uni for accommodation. That's around 1.8x the national average!

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The other unis in the top four for highest rent – Queen Mary, Royal Holloway and UCL – each had an average monthly rent of close to £900 (£909, £896 and £893 respectively).

Cheapest universities for accommodation

Credit: Manchesterphotos - Wikimedia

Among surveyed students, those at York St John had the cheapest accommodation, reporting an average monthly rent of £363 (around two-thirds of the national average).

For a picture of the cost of rent at universities across the UK, search our table below.

Rent costs by university

* In these instances, there were not enough respondents (or too many significant outliers) to give a reliable average. As an indicative amount, we have used the average rent for each university's region.

Does the Maintenance Loan cover the cost of rent?

Each year the results of our National Student Accommodation Survey highlight just how tough it is to rent while at uni, and something needs to change.

With rent prices still worryingly high, many students have complained that their Maintenance Loan just doesn't cover it.

In the survey, 64% of those who pay rent said they struggled with the costs at least some of the time, including 20% who described it as a constant struggle.

Clearly, there's an issue here, and 61% of students are having to borrow money from sources such as their parents, banks and friends to help pay the rent.

A major issue is that Maintenance Loans, especially for students from England, haven't been keeping up with inflation over recent years. We're calling on the government to change this.

To find out more about the realities of renting at uni, see the full results of the National Student Accommodation Survey.