Student housing provider Unite Group sells £190m of its portfolio

Student housing provider Unite Group has now completed disposals totalling £190m as part of its plan to concentrate on high-demand universities, it announced in its half-year results today.

The group announced earlier this year that it is looking to sell up to £400m of its portfolio and has identified between 15,000 and 20,000 beds for sale.

Its new strategy will see it focus on the “strongest universities” where there are 2.3x applicants to available places, which means it will concentrate on around 20 cities comprising around 60,000 beds.

In its interim results for the six months to 30 June, Unite said its adjusted earnings for the half year totalled £142m, down on the £144.2m reported for the same period last year. Unite said this “reflects increased interest costs, disposals completed in 2025 and lower occupancy.” Its like-for-like rental income growth fell from 7.4% to 1.5% over the same period.

However Unite re-iterated its guidance of achieving adjusted earnings per share of 41.5-43p in the full year.

Joe Lister, chief executive of Unite, said: “We are moving at pace to deliver our strategy to increase alignment to the UK’s strongest universities, where student demand is robust and growing.

”Following a detailed portfolio review, we have set out an ambitious plan to focus our portfolio on these universities. We are creating a higher-quality business, with strong and sustainable long-term growth prospects.

“In a less certain operating environment, performance in the first half has been encouraging, with reservations up year-on-year for Unite Students and Hello Student and earnings in line with our expectations”.