Unite swings to £400m paper loss on revised valuations

A sharper focus on the country’s top 20 student cities, including Birmingham and Nottingham, will see the student accommodation provider sell more than £300m of assets this year.

The student accommodation provider’s portfolio reduced in value by 6.4% year-on-year, according to its half-year trading update, while efforts to shed non-core assets look set to bear fruit before the end of the 2026.

This valuation decrease in the first six months of 2026 has resulted in a £417m pre-tax paper loss – compared to a £186m pre-tax profit for H1 2025 – and is down to softening yields as a result of “higher interest rates and a less certain operating environment”, Unite said.

The group owns more than 20 PBSAs across the Midlands, in Birmingham, Coventry, Nottingham, Loughborough and Leicester. It is also a 50/50 investor in LSAV, a joint venture with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, which acquired Aston Student Village in Birmingham for £227m in 2017.

The plan is to reinvest a portion of the sales proceeds into projects such as the 2,330-bed Cambridge Halls in Manchester and a 2,000-bed scheme at the Castle Leazes estate in Newcastle, which are being delivered in joint venture with Manchester Metropolitan University and Newcastle University respectively.

Together, these schemes make up the majority of Unite’s committed 6,000-bed pipeline and will generate £29m of net operating income for the firm.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 units have been identified for disposal, which will see Unite exit nine non-core cities to create a “more focused, higher-quality portfolio”.

Unite, which acquired Empiric in January, currently has 72,000 beds under management but is aiming to reduce this to between 55,000 and 60,000 as part of an ongoing recalibration of its portfolio.

This strategy aims to capitalise on increasing demand in certain locations. Applications to study at “high-tariff” universities have increased by 7% for the 2026/27 academic year, ahead of 5% growth for the university sector as a whole, according to Unite’s trading update.

Following recent uncertainty around international students due to changes in visa rules, Unite has seen demand from overseas learners “stabilise”.

“International undergraduate applicants are up 7% for 2026/27, with applications from China up 12%, which is offsetting the impact of reduced numbers of international postgraduate students,” Unite said.