Wealthy foreign students snap up London digs at £1,000 a week

Overseas students from wealthy families are renting some of London’s most desirable and expensive flats.

While UK students are mostly forced to make do with tiny bedsits and cramped shared accommodation on the outskirts of town, central London’s best addresses — where weekly rents can top £1,000 per week — are seeing an influx from abroad moving alongside bankers, oil industry tycoons and advertising directors.

Estate agents Peter Wetherell and market intelligence group Dataloft found that Knightsbridge was the most expensive place in prime central London to rent a two-bedroom flat (average rent £1,252 per week), followed by Mayfair (£1,016 per week), Kensington High Street (£822), Marylebone (£761), Fitzrovia (£685) Victoria (£713) and Covent Garden (£752).

The review found that foreign students made up 35 per cent all Mayfair tenants in the £750 to £999 per week price band and 25 per cent in the £1,000 to £1,999 price band. There were even a few renting at over £2,000 per week.

The Wetherell findings are supported by figures from the Home Office and a report on London Higher Education by Oxford Economics. There are more than 300,000 non-EU students at British universities at any one time, worth £5 billion a year to the UK economy. Of these, 105,000 are studying in London either full or part-time, contributing £1.5 billion a year to the capital’s economy through rents, education fees and spending in shops and leisure venues.

Peter Wetherell said: “The overseas students in Mayfair originate from very wealthy privileged families from the Middle East, Asia, United States, Russia and India. The families want them to be in secure and luxurious ‘home from home’ accommodation.” He added they chose Mayfair because they like the West End’s nightlife, restaurants and shops. The proximity of fashion, art and music colleges was also a draw.

At the premium rental project, 65 Duke Street, prices start at £1,950 per week — and the flats were snapped up by tenants within days of its launch. Mr Wetherell said: “Around a third of the tenants at 65 Duke Street are wealthy students from overseas.”