Student accommodation? Why not buy you own?

Young people and their parents are quite understandably looking for ways of reducing the student debt situation that arises when sons and daughters head off to university or college. Neither parents nor the young people themselves find the prospect of up to £30,000 ‘+’ of debt on graduation an attractive proposition.

Increasingly they are looking at one of the key areas of student life expense –student accommodation – for ways in which that negative expenditure can be reduced and even possibly turned to a positive.

And it’s not just the cost of rented homes, but in certain circumstances, the quality of the accommodation available that worries parents and students alike. Parents don’t like the idea of their young people living in dingy accommodation, that may not be safe or secure. Worries about break ins and the horror stories about gas leaks, poor electric wiring and carbon monoxide leaks, whilst thankfully rare are nevertheless concerning.

One answer is for parents to invest in buying a new flat or house close to their son or daughter’s higher education establishment, safe in the knowledge that the young people will be in a modern, safe and secure home, and that the property should over the three or four years of their course’s duration, see reasonable capital growth and allow them either to sell the property on if it is no longer needed or keep it and use it as a longer term investment perhaps, bringing in rent and seeing further capital growth as part of their future planning.

Family owned Bloor Homes has several developments on-going in Gloucester that offer a potential solution for parents looking for quality student accommodation whilst their young people are at University in the city. Not only can they offer a selection of competitively priced homes, they even offer help in buying them.

Bloor Homes has recently launched an exciting new scheme that will enable buyers to buy a brand new home for far less than the asking price. HomesStart2 offers buyers the opportunity to initially pay just 75 per cent of the full property price, with the remaining 25 per cent payable at any time within the first ten years. So if parents want to buy a home for their son or daughter, they can start out by paying or getting a mortgage towards just 75% of the asking price, and the remainder could be repaid when the house is sold.

This 25 per cent will be calculated at the current market value at the time it is repaid. Of course if the home is owned for the usual length of a higher education course, the 25% will never have to be funded – just paid back from the sale proceeds.

For those who want to live in Gloucester and buy into one of the most ambitious regeneration schemes to take place in the city, a range of 2- to 4- bedroom properties are available on Bloor’s Monk Meadow Quay development on Gloucester Docks.

This development is very much at the front end of the redevelopment project that will transform Gloucester’s waterside area and capital growth is expected by some to be impressive as the new homes, the new shopping area and the new business development take off over the next few years. Selected properties on each of these schemes are eligible for purchasing under the HomesStart2 initiative.

Bloor Homes Sales and Marketing Director, Mark Powell said:

“We appreciate the current difficulties that many young people are facing when they are looking for student accommodation. Parents and the young people concerned share the concerns about just where the young people will end up living for three or four years at university.

“Providing a stable, secure, high quality home for them during their stay in Gloucester makes huge sense if it can be made affordable, and instead of wasting money paying rent, this option allows the parents to invest in the monthly mortgage repayments, safe in the knowledge that they will probably get all that back – and more beside.”

For more information visit the marketing suites at any of the developments where Sales Advisers are on hand daily between 10am and 5.15pm. Details of the developments and contact details for the individual sites are available by visiting Bloorhomes.com.