This Oxford neighbourhood is at the forefront of the student housing frenzy
49 HMO licenses have been granted in the area this year alone, as demand for accommodation remains high amongst the city's huge student population
Analysis of England and Wales Census data from 2021 can reveal that East Central Oxford has the highest proportion of properties let by private landlords or letting agencies in the city.
The figure stands at almost 48% for the area east of the city centre and transected by the popular Cowley Road.
This figure has changed little since the 2011 census where the figure stood at just over 46%. For Oxford as a whole, the proportion of people renting via private landlords or letting agencies stood at just over 29%.
The proportion of houses privately rented in the area being so much higher than the city’s average is in part due to its popularity amongst students. East Central Oxford is situated between the city’s two major higher education institutions, the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University.
Areas with a similarly high proportion of private rented properties include other student-dominated areas including Oxford Central at 44% and Osney, Jericho & Port Meadow at 41%.
There is a high demand for student housing across the whole of the UK, a 2023 report by Cushman & Wakefield showed that nationwide there is a staggering student to bed ratio of 2.1:1.
This trend has not escaped Oxford, with high demand and low supply forcing some University of Oxford colleges to put up students in hotel rooms for the first semester of 2023, due to a lack of university accommodation.
Competition in the city can be extremely fierce in the city as many students found out last year, with estate agents not being able to keep up with demand as one student, Will, from Oxford Brookes found out:
They told us that we could view one place, so we walked up to the house for a quick look around. By the time we had got there, before we even got upstairs they called us to say that the flat had already been let.
Much of this demand is met by HMOs or Houses in Multiple Occupancy. An HMO is a property rented out to three or more people who are not from the same ‘household’ (family members for example) and requires a special licence from the local council.
Why do Landlords let to Students?
HMOs can be a lucrative prospect for landlords, Octane Capital calculated the average rental yields from HMOs is almost double that of conventional rental properties.
This high rental yield is in part due to how landlords can subdivide houses in HMOs. This means that properties can often house more people than lived there previously. For example, one terraced house on Aston Street in East Central Oxford contains 13 occupants, according to Oxford City Council’s HMO Register.
For properties with postcodes starting with OX4 1, which covers approximately the same area as the East Central Oxford census area, there are 911 registered HMOs, almost 30% of the city’s total. This is despite East Central Oxford having only 7% of the city’s population according to recent estimates from the Office for National Stastistics.
The challenges of “Studentification”
Studentification is a term often used for the effect a large number of student properties can have on an area. Although there can be benefits for local businesses, there can be a number of challenges including overburdened local infrastructure.
This problem is clear in East Central Oxford where bins can be seen overflowing due to lack of capacity, likely caused by an increased number of residents at the 911 HMO properties.
Since the beginning of 2024 alone, there have been 49 brand new HMO licences for the OX4 1 area approved, accounting for 259 potential occupants. The ability of local infrastructure to keep up with this rate of increase is understandably being tested.
Other challenges a boom in student numbers can bring about include overburdened parking infrastructure, noise, and a lack of community cohesion due to anti-social behaviour.
The quality of housing can diminish too with this demand, as landlords know they can guarantee tenant demand even for substandard accommodation.
How could these challenges be approached?
The challenges that HMO properties have brought about are not unique to Oxford. In response to similar challenges, Plymouth City Council and Salford City Council last year introduced restrictions on HMO properties, to try to curb some of these negative effects.
In Plymouth this included a council motion to bring about clearer guidelines to ensure HMOs do not exceed 10% of properties in any area, as well as improvements in waste collection in areas with higher numbers of HMOs.
Oxford City Council’s Local Plan for housing hopes to meet some of this demand, which has led to high number of HMO properties, with 9612 properties planned to be built. The Council also passed a motion to back calls to give local authorities the power to introduce rent controls.
Chris Jarvis, Green Councillor for the St Mary’s Ward in the East Central Oxford area, in a recent interview about this Council motion, thinks the current rental landscape in the city is unsustainable:
For far too long, the private rented sector operates as a free-market wild west where landlords cash in and tenants lose out.
Whether the Local Plan will ease pressure on neighbourhoods with swelling numbers, remains to be seen. Otherwise approaches like those used in Plymouth and Salford may need to be considered in Oxford.