Falling property sale transactions in Britain may be forcing 150 estate agent branches to close each week, but the student housing market is booming.
According to property portal propertyfinder.com, university towns and cities had the most people looking for rental property during the summer.
Every town in the 20 most-searched-for locations on the portal's website had a university campus, with Lincoln, Oxford and Southampton topping the table.
'A-level results came out in August and since then there has been a scramble to secure privately rented accommodation by students,' company director Nicholas Leeming said.
'Often late applicants are not eligible for university accommodation. So while most students will have had their accommodation for the year secured some time ago, those who didn't achieve the results they expected have been busily looking for places to live before the start of term.'
Sales of student homes were buoyed by an influx of investors over the summer - university towns dominated sales markets, propertyfinder.com found. Investors were attracted to the above average rental returns available in this sector of the housing market.