“The question isn't whether your portfolio has data. It's whether your data can tell you why Studio 203 is heating an empty room to 32°C while you're reading this...”Chanel Turner-Ross - Head of Marketing at Utopi
The student accommodation sector has embraced data. Carbon analysis, sustainability reporting, ESG frameworks — they’re all firmly established. But here’s the uncomfortable reality: most of this data tells you what’s happening at building level, not why, or how, it happened at room level. And in that gap between aggregate reporting and granular insight, thousands of pounds vanish monthly, invisible to traditional monitoring.
The difference isn’t philosophical — it’s financial. A building meter shows 15,000 kWh consumed; Room-level data reveals Studio 203 sat empty at 32.3°C for three weeks, Studio 417 ran a rogue heater at 20.2 kWh daily, and twenty vacancy turnovers consumed electricity identical to occupied rooms for 11 days each. These aren’t hypotheticals — they’re real patterns from PBSA portfolios, repeating right now in buildings convinced they have ‘good data’.
What Building-level Hides That Room-level Reveals.
Consider autumn term transition. A three-week gap between move-out and move-in. Building consumption shows a modest dip — exactly as expected. Everything appears normal.
Except granular, room-level monitoring revealed something different: one space, vacant for 20 days according to PIR sensors, maintained energy consumption patterns identical to an occupied room; Heating cycling, appliances on standby. Total waste: 194 kWh with a monthly cost: £65.80 per room. Scale this across a portfolio – and these ‘in-between periods’ happen with every tenancy change, multiple times per term, across hundreds of units. Building dashboards can’t distinguish between base load and systematic waste. Room-level data can.
The same goes for overheated studios. Following a Utopi install, the Utopi Heatmap revealed two unoccupied studios consistently registering as the warmest spaces in the building. Studio 1: 28.7°C. Studio 2: 32.3°C. Both vacant. Building data? Unremarkable — it merged into overall consumption. Room-level insights however, allowed for proactive energy management. The site teams’ intervention was immediate: heating switched off, temperatures reduced, and over a 200-day heating season, the waste could have totaled 5,760 kWh and £1,440. The reality of room-level insights.
Why Granularity Means No-Compromise.
Research shows 78% of students expect well-being support and 55% expect environmental standards — yet few will pay premiums. And with 17% of PBSA beds above the Maximum Maintenance Loan threshold and London rents alone at 110% of typical part-time earnings, affordability isn’t negotiable.
Granular data creates a solid solution: deliver expectations by eliminating specific waste rather than broad cuts that compromise offerings. This is how operators afford the credentials students expect without unsustainable pricing. Not cutting corners — data-driven asset performance strategies that eliminate unnecessary waste that building monitoring structurally cannot see. And energy management is just one side of it; data can uncover so much more than just heating and cooling behaviours… but more on that in another blog.
Why This Matters for PBSA Investors and Operators.
When institutional investors deploy £830 million in quarterly PBSA activity, due diligence relies on operational metrics: occupancy rates, energy certificates, maintenance records. Building-level pictures. But acquisition decisions increasingly hinge on operational efficiency that building data cannot validate.
Consider a 200-unit building with good EPC ratings and 95% occupancy. Building monitoring confirms consumption is ‘within normal range’. Everything appears optimised. But room-level data might reveal: twelve units maintaining heating during vacancy (1,500 kWh monthly waste), eight rooms at 28°C+ while vacant, fifteen students using external heating unnecessarily, and three equipment faults creating baseload anomalies. Building data shows ‘acceptable performance’. Room data shows £3,000+ monthly addressable waste requiring no capital expenditure. This granularity and clarity drawn from data transforms investment thesis from ‘acceptable costs’ to ‘quantified optimisation with documented ROI’.
With occupancy at leading operators around 97.5%, competitive differentiation lies not in filling buildings but operating with measurably superior efficiency. As EPC requirements tighten and GRESB scoring intensifies (and yes, more granularity in asset performance will be needed as GRESB update their assessment criteria again), regulatory compliance isn’t about having data — it’s about having the right insights to drive change. Building monitoring tells you targets weren’t met. Room monitoring tells you precisely which spaces drove the shortfall and what interventions could close the gap.
The operators positioning successfully aren’t those with the most sophisticated building technologies or dashboards, they’re those recognising that granular, room-level insights are the only foundation for optimisation that doesn’t compromise quality. Because you can’t fix what you can’t see, you can’t manage what you can’t find, and building aggregation structurally obscures your largest opportunities.
The question isn’t whether your portfolio has data. It’s whether your data can tell you why Studio 203 is heating an empty room to 32°C while you’re reading this.
See more Utopi data stories, here – and uncover the granularity you can achieve using Utopi PropTech and Data Solutions.