News | LOFT
The quality of student accommodation has certainly come a long way in recent years. Young uni students are turning away from outdated Halls of Residence in favour of design-led Purpose Built Student Accommodation.
Halls of Residence just aren’t meeting the needs of new age students. There’s no decent, quiet place to study, the amenity spaces are limited and the decor is often badly dated. If a sofa or armchair wouldn’t look out of place in a granny flat, you definitely won’t find it in PBSA.
A brand’s image and public perception count for a lot. Just look at how Cristiano Ronaldo wiped $4 billion off Coca Cola’s stock value when he snubbed the drink in favour of water during an interview.
If there’s one thing that all PBSA operators, landlords and student furniture suppliers know for sure, it’s that their furniture is going to take a bit of a beating.
But we’re only young once, and you can’t really blame students for letting loose. For many of them, it will be their first time away from home, and it’s easy to forget that there are still rules to follow (even if they’re not living under their parents’ roof any more).
Purpose-built student accommodation has quickly become one of the biggest markets in the property sector. Even with apprenticeship schemes offering an alternative route to employment and the ever-growing costs associated with going to university, the UK’s younger demographic are still keen on higher education.
It’s staggering how many items of furniture the UK throws away every single year; 22 million pieces, if you were wondering. And the worst part of it? A lot of the materials that have gone straight into a landfill could easily have been recycled.
LOFT began life in 2003 as ‘Buy To Let Furnishings’; specialising in cost-effective furnishing solutions to suit landlords and agents who regarded their tenants as a hassle, rather than highly valued residents or customers, as they’re considered as today.
If there’s one thing we can say for sure about the rental market in the UK, it’s that the sector is always changing. A temporary suspension on Stamp Duty, tenant eviction bans, fluctuating property prices; we’ve seen it all and more just in the last year.
Have you noticed that modern life has changed us? Busy schedules and soaring house prices have made it near impossible for us to socialise or climb the property ladder. This has changed how we find a place to live.
The thought of buying a three-bed house in the suburbs because it’s what our parents did is dying out. There’s not much point in a young, single professional having that much space even if they could afford it. For the most part, the property would just sit there empty.
Modern life has made it harder for us to find those special moments to enjoy the outside. We always seem to be glued to a screen, even when we’re on a walk or a run. So, if we can’t take the time to appreciate nature, we need to find ways to appreciate interiors.
Operating as LOFT for over two decades, there’s not much we haven’t seen in the way of interior design and furniture. We were there for the rise of BTL, BTR and PBSA. We’ve been at the forefront of environmental changes in furniture, championing the “resident first” approach to the private rental sector and understanding the unique challenges landlords face.
When it comes to you and your residents, LOFT has always understood that our excellent customer service is what separates us from other companies. And we’re proud of that!
Truth is, we know landlords have a lot of options for furniture suppliers. But our commitment to working around you and your residents is one of the main reasons why landlords prefer to instruct us to fit out their properties.
The rental market in the UK is in the middle of a transformation that we haven’t seen for decades. Since the introduction of the 1988 Housing Act, Buy to Let (BTL) has been king in the UK. But everything changes over time, and the BTR sector is now hot on the heels of BTL.
