Alternative accommodation outside campus hostels, a subset of student housing, is a goldmine waiting to be tapped. In Lagos, there are 36 real estate tech startups exploring opportunities in student housing. They are using digital innovation and online platforms to address the needs of the real estate sector. Assistant Editor OKWY IROEGBU-CHIKEZIE, in this report, says it covers smart building and space management.
FOR many admission seekers, getting a place in the tertiary institutions is akin to the Biblical camel passing through the eye of the needle.
Equally difficult after securing a place is getting accommodation on the campus. Reason: space constraint.
True, since the late 1980s the explosion in student population has aggravated the accommodation burden.
Nationwide, institutions of higher learning are battling hostel shortage. Worse still, the few hostels in the universities, polytechnics and other iinstitutions are not properly managed, thereby making it impossible for the government to handle them.
No doubt, the population growth pattern has long outpaced the capacities of hostel accommodations in the universities. Facing financial challenges, university administrators lack the means to build more bed spaces to meet the increasing demand as yearly intakes surge.
The result is a crisis that needs a sustainable fix. Less than 30 per cent of enrolled students are housed on campuses in shared accommodations that are not conducive for learning. A majority of students are compelled to rent expensive spaces “off-campus” in the university environment.
This gap is a profitable investment opportunity for developers and the private sector. And there are several players in the space.
Sometimes, students pay hostel fees and end up not getting rooms due to shortages. In addition, most times the hostel administrators cannot give accurate information of the occupancy of a room.
While to many inadequate accommodation on campuses is a big challenge, the private sector has identified this development as an investment opportunity.
In Nigeria, the student hostel accommodation subsector is large, potential for private sector investment. There are more than 170 universities in the country. They include 43 federal universities, 48 state universities, and 79 private universities.
In addition, the country has 17 federal and 26 state-owned polytechnics, while others are owned by individuals, religious and corporate bodies. Statistics show that the population of tertiary enrolment exceeds two million students competing yearly for about 750,000 admission slots. Average yearly growth is estimated to be above 12 per cent.
Right now, investors are hunting for investment to put their money with little or no risk. They see universities and other higher institution hostels as safe havens.
An estate surveyor and valuer , Offiong Samuel Ukpong, said though the country’s population is increasing, there are no plans by the decision makers to cater for this growth.
He said: “The educational subsector is also neglected. Yet, there is a huge gap in the demand for higher education and its supply.This gap varies from admissions, accommodation and facilities.
“The developers have come in to handle one of the gaps: accommodation. This is a good development and a secured investment as the income is secured, regular and certain.
“Some of the hostels are designed and fitted with features similar to hotels for ease of management, where, the doors are automatically locked when the rent expires.
“Technology is driving the economy in contemporary times. Therefore, the e-hostelling is the matter for our time.”
Also a developer, Adetola Bamgbose, maintained that private hostels offer investors and developers growth opportunities. He agreed this to the growing number of universities and polytechnics and colleges of education.
However, their increased number came with challenges, he added. He lamented that the sector remains one of the poorly funded, but for the intervention of the private sector that has come up with various approaches to dealing with student housing problems and proving financing support plans.
Today, there are hostel investment models.
This has culminated into online student hostels platforms to engage investors and accommodation seekers, he said.
One of them is Tech Pros. Its School Software Pro has reporting feature. The system provides reports on the number of available rooms, their occupants and funds generated from hostel fees per semester, making it easier to get accurate data and management.
Its inventors boast that no matter at what scale a school is operating the hostel facilities, their proficient software will handle it.
The software provides building information like wards, the number of floors, and rooms along with their capacity and facilities with the efficient hostel management.
It integrates the students’information with that of hostel infrastructure to make for smooth management of hostilities. The result is that room allocation is made easy.
Experts say that running a hostel is as akin to running a school and it involves many expenses.
Hostels are supposed to be second home for the students, enrich their experience. Thus proper hostel management is vital to make them believe that their second home is caring.
There are several e-platforms in this service industry.
For instance, Self-Letting enables users to find an ideal roommate, search for apartments/rooms, and also lets owners list their apartment to find an ideal tenant. An user is encouraged to sign up with their social accounts.
A user can search for a compatible roommate by browsing the social platform and connecting with them through their chat features.
The platform also enables the landlords to find a tenant.
Also, Rent a Lodge, an online platform, helps users to list and book student accommodation. Students can browse for hostels, apartments, and houses by using filters like nearby school, city, budget, and others.
Thus, a student can book the space via an online payment. Once the payment is done, the company delivers the keys to the user. It charges a one-time service fee, included in the first rental payment, from property seekers.
The company enables property providers to advertise on the platform for free. The listing is only published once it has been verified by the company.
A climate-smart developer, Greenage, has set out not only to meet the demand, but also to do so in a manner that aligns with the future direction of the global built environment by adopting green building practices. This focus has put the firm ahead of the competition and on a more sustainable path to business growth, brand equity, and profitable returns to its investors.
Incorporating green building practices into its hostel designs enables Greenage to deliver bed spaces that use water and energy more efficiently, leading to lower utility, operations, and maintenance costs.
“We are out to make a sustainable difference in the student housing space in Nigeria. And that means charting a different path. Instead of building in the conventional fashion, which could be in the short term, less expensive, we have decided to think and build green. This is because it shows not only our commitment to building a better climate smart future, but because it makes business sense too for our investors,” an Executive Director with Greenage, Mr. MarcellinusNnaedozie, said.
Also, an innovation of IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies), provides a way for design teams to optimise their designs to achieve certification as green. It includes a cloud-based platform to calculate the cost of going green and utility savings.
Fast, smart, affordable, and inclusive, EDGE is powered by a state-of-the-art engine that possesses reliable city-based climate and cost data, consumption patterns, and algorithms for predicting the most accurate performance results.
By adopting EDGE, Greenage has been able to unlock new sources of investment to drive its hostel projects. They have set up a $150 million sustainable fund to power development of 100,000 bed spaces across the country over a 10-year period. The first phase of the programme is estimated at $50million.
The business proposition is simple: Where interested universities provide the land, and Greenage sources financing through strategic partnerships to build, operate, and maintain the hostels at a modest fee that students would pay.
In essence, they would be delivering a managed hostel accommodation service that ensures proper structural maintenance and provision of relevant amenities to create a comfortable living experience for students.
The proposition is fit for cash strapped universities. With minimal financial commitment, universities stand to gain to build resource-efficient student residences, providing amenities that are crucial to learning while playing a vital role in fostering an eco-friendly campus community.
How school hostel management works
THE Hostel Management System is a software that manages the staff and students in the hostel. It enables students to apply online for hostels and the system allocates rooms to the students in the hostels.
It offers featured accommodation system to efficiently manage the entire residential facility in the school. Apart from reducing the staff and paper works, the software keeps an updated records of students, their meals, lodgings, transfer rooms, among others.
Features of school hostel management system
In Hostel management systems, the wardens can check, assign the rooms per availability of the rooms and demands by the students.
•Manage the hostel students’ financial records: Instead of maintaining the paperwork, the students who accompanied admission in the hostel, fees management can be configured within the hostel management system.
The wardens can manage the assets in the room per student’s requirements.The warden specifies the required category of the asset.
Also there is angle for visitors’ management in the hostel management system.
In hostel management systems exclusively, the gate pass of the visitors who check-in and out is generated in the system with eye-catching reports. Hostel students’ attendance Tracking is also incorporated for the hostel students who check in and out multiple times for outside work, all the student’s logs are generated and constantly monitored by the warden in the software.
It further send regular reminders in form of alerts where parents are updated regularly as it has excellent Short Message Service (SMS), emails, or notifications of student’s admission, attendance, room vacancy, gate pass and many more.
Benefits of hostel management software
Hostel Administrator can control restrict and allow the students on permission.
It saves the paper with students’ expenses, fees, and account management.
It also have One Time Password(OTP)-based gate pass management for security and parent’s consent.
It allows for the efficient management of the hostels.
It allows one to manage students and teachers in their hostels and rooms.
It helps to keep a record of hostel ins and outs and hostel consumables and durables efficiently.
It helps to generate customised reports for further reference.
Part of the essence is in its ability to address the major problems in the manual allocation of hostels to students in the universities.
The growing number of students in higher institutions poses many problems for students and School Management.
