HeyStudent
Making Student Housing More Accessible

Konstantinos Stengos, founder and CEO of HeyStudent, studied in London, where the accommodation search proved more difficult and expensive than he expected. Securing a place required travelling ahead of each move, visiting agencies and properties in person and completing financial checks as an international student. With nowhere to stay during the search, he paid for hotels as he tried to arrange a long term home. Parents often flew in to help, taking time away from work to do it.

The experience shaped the idea that became HeyStudent, a platform designed to let students secure accommodation before they ever leave their home country.

“We have created a safe ecosystem where students can find and book accommodation from the other side of the world,” says Stengos.

The starting point is the virtual property tour. Every property listed on HeyStudent is set to include a mandatory 3D tour, produced by the company rather than supplied by the owner. Students can walk through bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and shared spaces on a laptop from anywhere in the world and book without an in person visit. The entire tenancy workflow, contracts, identity documents and security deposits, moves through the platform digitally, replacing the manual, in person process that once dominated student lettings.

Payments are where HeyStudent diverges most clearly from the rest. Students can pay the full amount upfront or spread the cost over monthly instalments, an option not previously available on student housing platforms. Partnerships with providers such as Klarna, Affirm and TBI Bank extend this further, allowing students in some markets to distribute the cost of a year’s rent over longer, structured payment plans.

Trust underpins the entire model. Students verify their identity through Persona, a global identity-verification system that returns results within seconds. A second check instantly confirms student status using a university letter, an acceptance letter or a student ID. On the host side, HeyStudent’s onboarding team meets with each property owner in person and produces each 3D tour in-house, ensuring the platform, not the landlord, controls the accuracy and consistency of what students see.

Financial protection continues after a booking is made. HeyStudent holds security deposits directly through an internal dispute process designed to prevent unverified claims at the end of a tenancy. Students can also purchase an insurance package, typically priced between 30 and 60 euros or dollars, depending on the market, which covers disputes over damage and missed or late rent.

One partnership accelerated the platform’s credibility more than any single feature. An early agreement with JLL, the global real estate firm, signalled to both students and property owners that HeyStudent met a recognised industry standard. JLL continues to source properties for the platform, strengthening its supply base and reinforcing trust on both sides of the marketplace.

Supply, rather than demand, remains the real constraint in student accommodation and HeyStudent has approached the problem from two directions. The first involves hotels. In several tourist countries, properties that sit largely empty during the academic year, because the tourism off season coincides with the university calendar, now house students instead. For many hotel owners, the shift has turned unused capacity into reliable, year round occupancy. The second direction involves banks and real estate investors. Through partnerships across Europe, HeyStudent provides access to pre approved property finance options for investors who wish to purchase homes and list them on the platform, with rental income supporting the repayment structure.

The platform’s effect on students and homeowners has been broader than Stengos anticipated. Students from India, Spain, Canada, Italy, the US and elsewhere have returned to share stories of friendships formed with people they met in the same building. HeyStudent is developing welcome-week gatherings and student events in cities worldwide as part of a planned programme to help those connections take shape.

“It is the one platform, exactly like Airbnb and Booking.com are for tourists,” concludes Stengos. “We are going to be the same for students.

”Whether a student lives in Italy, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan or Bolivia, they want booking through HeyStudent to be the obvious choice straight out of school.