Conal Newland, on his views on the evolution of the Purpose Built Student Accommodation sector

In the lead up to the Student Accommodation Development World conference, I caught up with Conal Newland, a Director at Savills to better understand his views on how the sector is evolving and what the key drivers will be for the Australian market going forwards.

We cover a broad range of topics, from the importance of student experience, to the future role of Universities in PBSA.

Conal will be speaking at the conference and was also critical in its development as part of its advisory panel.

Aleks: Hi Conal, thanks for taking the time to talk. To kick things off, do you mind sharing a bit about your background in the industry?

Conal: I started working in student accommodation in 2004, when I went over to the UK and joined a firm called King Sturge. I spent a total of nine years in the UK and in that time I worked with both private sector developers and operators, and was involved with a number of universities in several on campus procurement projects. In 2014, I moved to Australia with JLL to help set-up their student accommodation team to cover Australia and New Zealand. That eventually led to moving to Savills just over two years ago.

Aleks: You've certainly got an extensive background in the space, I imagine that when you first started the student housing specific industry would have been quite fledgling. How has it progressed?

Conal: The market in the UK then was very similar to what it is now in Australia, from a number of different angles. From a real estate perspective, we are seeing a number of institutional investors building portfolios, with a limited number of transactions of operational assets. Moving forward, I think we will begin to see more transactions.

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