Housing shortage sees students sleep in shipping containers
All photos: Citiq (via Design Boom)
The disused grain silos were not top of anybody's housing wishlist before Citiq started their unorthodox project. Now, though, the developer has harvested them into a cutting edge development - literally, in terms of the windows, which were carved out of the structure using a diamond-titanium blade.
The end result? A colourful addition to the South African city's skyline, offering libraries, loungers and computer rooms, not to mention the panoramic views from inside the shipping containers themselves. The containers were stacked on the outside of the silos in a move to add extra floor space, reports Curbed, reaching a height of 11 storeys.
Students were so keen to find places to live that the 375 individual apartments were a soaring success, with almost one-third of the build filled up within half a week of its opening.
Johannesburg is not the only place where student property is in high demand, though. Indeed, the trend is reported around the world, with large volumes of students facing a low suppply of housing.
In the UK, occupancy is at almost 100 per cent, according to Colordarcy.
Loxley McKenzie, Managing Director of the consultants, comments: “There is a shortage of good quality student housing in some of the more sought after university towns and cities in the UK. Occupation is as much as 99% making it a very lucrative opportunity for property investors.
The number of international applicants to higher education establishments in the UK has increased by 10 per cent on 2011 and 2012, pushing demand, occupancy rates and yields up - not to mention interest from investors. Indeed, Colordarcy has seen record breaking sales of UK student property in 2014, with transactions surging 50 per cent compared to January 2013.
They are not alone. £2.1 billion was injected into student housing across the whole of 2013, according to CBRE, the second year in a row that the sector has topped the £2 billion mark.
88 per cent of that sum was spread across 30 different towns - a regional boom that bucks the London-centric trend of many real estate asset classes, as supply shortages strike in cities ranging from Coventry and Swansea to Manchester.
Investment portal TheMoveChannel.com, meanwhile, has seen student housing rank among its 10 most popular listings for eight of the last 12 months.
Jo Winchester, Head of Student Housing Advisory at, CBRE, comments: “Investor appetite for student accommodation is growing, as there is a structural undersupply across many UK towns and cities. Although changes to tuition fees and other factors created uncertainty in the letting market of 2012/13, the latest UCAS figures show that University acceptance figures for 2013/14 are now at their highest level ever.
Colordarcy's McKenzie added: “The student property sector is worth billions to the UK economy and investors can be confident that student numbers will continue to rise as a result of the increasing volume of domestic and overseas applications.”
Shipping containers may not be sailing into Oxford or Cambridge any time soon, but you can bet developers would not rule it out.
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