A student lettings agency operating across 20 university cities in the UK has expanded into Lancaster.
Loughborough-founded loc8me has taken over Mighty Student Living - acquiring 1,235 additional bedrooms in the city and taking on its 19 staff, with founder Peter Charnley staying involved to support the transition.
loc8me said that Mighty Student Living’s team will continue to manage its Lancaster student housing portfolio.
The company, based on Market Street in the city centre, has grown into one of Lancaster’s largest student lettings operators, managing more than 350 properties across the city and Galgate.
The sale follows discussions over the long-term future of the business, with Mr Charnley looking for a company that could take it forward while retaining the team and landlord relationships built in Lancaster.
“Building Mighty Student Living has been a huge part of my life and I'm incredibly proud of the business we've created, but particularly of the people who have helped build it," said Mr Charnley.
“When considering the future of the business, finding the right home for the team and our landlords was much more important to me than simply completing a deal.
"Mighty Student Living has been built on local relationships and knowing the Lancaster student market, and those aren't things you want to lose as a business grows.
“For our landlords and students, there will still be familiar people here in Lancaster looking after them. I'm excited to see what the team can now achieve with loc8me behind them and I'm confident this is the right next chapter for Mighty Student Living.”
Raffaele Russo, founder of loc8me, said the deal was a significant step in the company's growth and backed the long-term future of student HMOs.
“Twenty cities feels like a real landmark for loc8me," he said.
"When we started the business in Loughborough in 2008, the ambition was to build something that really understood student housing and could eventually take that expertise into university cities across the country.
“What makes reaching that milestone particularly exciting is that we aren't starting from scratch in Lancaster. Mighty Student Living has already built a fantastic business with strong relationships and a significant presence in the city.
“We remain incredibly confident about the future of the student HMO market. There is still a huge role for high-quality shared student homes, and we want loc8me to continue investing in the people, businesses and university cities that make that market successful.”
Wesley Brown, Chief Operating Officer at loc8me, said: “Mighty Student Living stood out to us because this wasn't a business that needed to be reinvented. It has an experienced team, an established portfolio and a strong understanding of what landlords and students in Lancaster need.
“That is really important to how we approach growth. Acquiring a successful local business shouldn't mean stripping away the things that made it successful in the first place.
“The people joining loc8me know this market far better than we ever could by simply opening an office and starting from zero.”
Founded in 2008 by Raffaele Russo, loc8me started with a single office in Loughborough and a vision to transform student lettings.
It now operates across 20 major university cities across the UK, including Lancaster, Loughborough, Durham, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, Lincoln, Cardiff, Newcastle, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leicester, Hull, Bath, Bristol, York, Exeter, Swansea, Coventry and Aberystwyth.
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