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The best student cities to invest in rental properties: 2025 ranking and expert advice

The best student cities to invest in rental properties: 2025 ranking and expert advice

Mar 15, 2022

3 minutes

In rental investment, the choice of location is a key factor. It often determines the success of a project.

Investing in a student city is a choice that is very strategic! A strong student presence represents great opportunities for small furnished properties and a quick rental process. For this, it's important to gather information before making a decision. We agree, it’s not always obvious and it takes a lot of time. 

Gift🎁! We conducted a study on investment for renting to students, region by region. For this, we based ourselves on 12 cities: Paris, Marseille, Lille, Rouen, Lyon, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Nantes, Tours, and Rennes. And here are our analysis criteria: 

  • Minimum budget for making an investment 

  • Number of students present in the city  

  • Net profitability rate for a studio

Example: Paris. The minimum budget to invest is 140,000€ for an average profitability rate of 4% on a studio. 450,000 students are present in the city.

More details...

Now that you have the image, here's a bit more detail! 👍🏼

The budget presented is the minimum budget required to make a furnished investment in each city. It includes the following necessary components: 

  • Price with fees 

  • Notary Fees 

  • Fees Beanstock*

  • Work 

  • Furnishing 


*Quick Reminder 💡:  Our fees include property search, negotiation, financing search, architectural design, project monitoring, and finally one year of property management.

Marseille and Rouen as the big winners!

After reading the map, we can say that we put on the podium 🏆 : 

  • Rouen, which is the most accessible city for small envelopes! An investment is feasible with a budget of €85,000. It also represents the best profitability among the student metropolises studied with a rate of 4.5 %. 

  • Marseille, the second city of France, which offers excellent investment opportunities with a nice profitability of 4.5% and a significant student presence: 70,000! If you want to know more, we have also studied the profitability of investing in Marseille neighborhood by neighborhood! It's right here.

As for the rest, our beautiful capital represents the largest pool of students with 450,000 on the counter. The prices per square meter remain high but the profitability rate remains at 4% for Parisian studios! This is mainly due to a smaller average surface area compared to studios in the provinces.  

The lowest yield of our study is in Lyon! The city suffers from a rise in prices and rent control (which came into force on November 1, 2012), which is much stricter than in Paris. The minimum budget of €140,000 is also a barrier for the investment of studios for students in the capital of Gaul.