Student housing gap may hit 120,000 by 2028

Non-local enrolment has climbed to about 92,000 in 2024/25, the report noted.

Hong Kong is short of about 94,000 student hostel beds this academic year, a gap Colliers projects could widen to roughly 120,000 by 2028 as bed demand rises to an estimated 172,200.

In a report, Colliers said non-local enrolment has climbed to about 92,000 in 2024/25, whilst there were only around 38,000 hostel beds across government-funded institutions in the prior year.

The consultancy linked the pressure to years of under-building alongside policy shifts that expanded the non-local student quota at publicly funded universities to 40% from 20% and added scholarship places under the Belt and Road and PhD Fellowship schemes.

Beyond universities, Colliers highlighted a structural constraint in the secondary pipeline: only eight DSS and private schools currently offer optional full-term boarding, totaling roughly 2,100 places citywide, and the absence of a dedicated regulatory framework for boarding raises welfare and quality concerns.

As a near-term lever, the paper urged adaptive reuse of under-utilised commercial stock into hostels and education space and points to the government’s July 2025 “Hostels in the City Scheme,” which streamlines planning and building control for converting hotels and offices into student accommodation.

It further recommended a fast-track approval mechanism, standardised technical guidelines to cut compliance ambiguity, and a clear local framework to support purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA); reference yields for PBSA in the UK and Australia are cited at about 4.5%–5.0%.

The report listed recent Hong Kong precedents for conversions and campus expansion, including CityU’s repurposing of the Inter-Continental Plaza retail podium for academic use, HKMU’s acquisition of the Urbanwood Hung Hom hotel for student housing, amongst others.