Where to Invest Your Money in Ireland? Consider Student Accommodation
With bank deposit interest rates at a record low across Europe, stock markets tanking, and global economies stalling, it’s tough to work out where to invest your money in Ireland. Stowing your life savings into a ‘high-interest’ account paying 1% makes it barely worth extracting the cash from the mattress, the wild fluctuations of stocks and shares offer as much security as the roulette table, and traditional buy-to-sell property purchases have hit the rocks.
Yet amidst the chaos, a reliable haven remains for the smart investor to sit out the storm: Ireland’s buy-to-let student accommodation market. Let me explain exactly why it’s become such a shrewd, popular opportunity…
Consistent returns on your investment
There aren’t many places you can expect to get a 4% net return on investment these days, let alone the 6.5% or more that we regularly see our student accommodation landlords secure – and that’s after all costs have been accounted for. Yields are consistently higher than other types of rental property, notably because there will always be students, and there is an acute shortage of suitable student accommodation in the market.
There will always be students.
Official figures show that for the year ending 2018, a record high of 230,000+ students enrolled at third-level institutions across Ireland. International student numbers leapt by 27% in just three years to 2019. Increasingly, Ireland’s higher education sector is an attractive destination for learners from home and abroad. For investors, that’s a vast, growing quantity of people who need somewhere to live. Educational institutions don’t own sufficient land space and can’t keep pace with the demand, so the need for private rentals is still increasing.
The student accommodation sector is untouched by recession.
This may be the most attractive benefit of all right now. When we said there will always be students, we meant there will always be students. Even, perhaps especially, during an economic downturn. People continue going to colleges and universities to learn. The double benefit to you is that property purchase prices may go down in a contracting housing market, but the value of your rent does not.
Reduced risk…
Occasionally, we hear a misconception that student rents are somehow higher risk. But in our experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Students don’t want to be chucked off their courses for not respecting their homes, while rent payments are factors they take for granted as a necessary part of their education. In fact, according to a recent report, 69% of landlords in Ireland prefer renting to students over other tenants. Of course, if things do go wrong, then parents can act as guarantors who step in when required.
Aside from making it more likely they’ll look after your property with care, one of the positives of maintaining a good relationship with student tenants is that they might be happy to stick around for the longer term. Most of them commit to three or four-year courses, perhaps longer, and having the same tenants for that time is an excellent, guaranteed income.
Where to invest your money in Ireland successfully.
Becoming a successful student accommodation property investor in Ireland won’t be a time burden to you if you ensure you get the right management agent. Don’t try to manage student properties on your own because there are so many potential pitfalls. A specialist student accommodation management agent will make sure you have to do almost nothing. They’ll interview applicants to ensure you get the right student tenants for your property, ensure the accommodation is maintained as it should be, keep a good relationship with the people paying your rent and ensure you have a consistent, high-yielding income, year-on-year.
So, whether you’re interested in investing in self-contained apartments in purpose-built student villages or turning privately owned residential houses close to colleges and universities into HMOs adapted for the student market, we work hard to source the right property for you.