Student Living Leasing Manager

Student Living Leasing Manager

Colby River Student Living | Commercial & Leasing
Full-Time | Permanent | Hybrid with UK Travel

Drive occupancy. Shape the strategy. Make the numbers move.

Colby River Student Living is growing, and we’re looking for an experienced Student Living Leasing Manager to help drive the commercial performance of our expanding UK portfolio.

This is a national, high-impact role for someone who understands that successful leasing is about much more than filling rooms. You’ll combine commercial instinct, data and market insight to drive occupancy, optimise revenue and make sure our properties are positioned to perform.

Reporting to the Head of Leasing , you’ll influence leasing strategy across the portfolio, take ownership of pricing and availability controls, develop key partnerships and work directly with our site teams to turn enquiries into bookings.

If you know PBSA, understand what drives students to book and enjoy turning data into action, we want to hear from you.

What you'll be doing

Drive occupancy and leasing performance

You'll keep a close eye on performance across our portfolio and act quickly when you see an opportunity or risk.

You'll:

• Lead portfolio-wide rebooker, direct booking and tactical leasing campaigns

• Monitor booking pace, availability and room-type performance

• Identify occupancy gaps and put clear recovery plans in place

• Track conversion throughout the customer journey

• Improve enquiry, viewing, follow-up and booking performance

• Balance occupancy with rate integrity and long-term commercial value

You'll make sure everyone understands where we are, where we need to be and what we're doing to get there .

Own pricing and revenue performance

This is a commercially focused role where you'll have real influence over how we maximise the value of our portfolio.

You'll analyse booking pace, pick-up, conversion, cancellations, pricing and availability , using the data to identify opportunities and mitigate risks.

Working with colleagues across Operations, Marketing and Finance, you'll help shape rent-setting, budgets and forecasts and recommend pricing changes, promotions and incentives that deliver the right commercial outcome.

You'll also maintain strong governance around rate cards, rent settings, discounts, availability, contract lengths and other commercial changes.

Turn insight into action

We want someone who's naturally curious about the market.

You'll understand what's happening across our local PBSA markets – from competitor pricing and incentives to university demand, availability and changing student preferences.

But gathering data isn't enough.

You'll turn that intelligence into clear recommendations on pricing, products, channels and campaigns that help us make better and faster commercial decisions.

Develop powerful partnerships

You'll manage relationships with UK and international booking agents, brokers, referral partners, universities and educational representatives .

You'll understand which channels are delivering results, focus effort where it creates the most value and help develop nomination agreements, allocations and summer occupancy opportunities.

Make our site teams even better at leasing

You won't be sitting behind a spreadsheet all day.

You'll regularly visit our properties, working alongside General Managers and site teams to improve the way we sell.

You'll:

• Review enquiry handling and customer sales journeys

• Coach teams on product knowledge and objection handling

• Help colleagues deliver better viewings

• Strengthen follow-up and closing techniques

• Share best practice across the portfolio

• Build greater commercial confidence and accountability

• Support new property mobilisations and the onboarding of leasing colleagues

You won't necessarily manage these teams directly, so your ability to coach, influence and bring people with you will be key.

Work hand-in-hand with Marketing

You'll work closely with our Marketing team to make sure campaigns are focused on the commercial priorities that matter most.

Whether that's filling a particular room type, addressing an occupancy gap or targeting a specific student audience, you'll provide clear briefs and use lead quality, conversion and return to understand what's working – and what needs to change.

What we're looking for

You'll already have significant experience within PBSA, residential lettings, co-living, hospitality or a comparable multi-site sales environment , together with a track record of delivering occupancy, conversion and revenue results.

You'll bring:

• Strong commercial judgement and an understanding of pricing and revenue optimisation

• Experience analysing booking pace, conversion and sales performance

• Strong analytical skills and confidence turning data into practical action

• Experience with property management, CRM or booking platforms

• Strong Excel skills and ideally experience with Power BI

• Experience managing relationships with agents, universities or other commercial partners

• The ability to coach and influence teams without relying on direct line-management authority

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills

• A highly organised, proactive and solutions-focused approach

• A full UK driving licence and willingness to travel regularly across our portfolio

Experience with systems such as Yardi, StarRez, TCAS or Kinetic would be advantageous.

What makes you stand out?

You're commercially curious and comfortable challenging assumptions when the data tells a different story.

You move quickly, but with sound judgement. You're as comfortable discussing pricing and revenue with senior leaders as you are coaching a site team on how to convert more viewings into bookings.

And while you're focused on the numbers, you never lose sight of the people behind them – our students and the experience we want them to have.

What's in it for you?

You'll be joining Colby River Student Living at an exciting stage of our growth, with the opportunity to genuinely influence how our leasing function develops.

You'll receive:

• Competitive base salary

• Performance-related bonus

• Company mileage or travel allowance and business expenses

• Contributory pension

• Health cash plan

• Career development within a growing Commercial & Leasing function

• The opportunity to shape portfolio-wide leasing standards, systems and strategy

Come and shape our next stage of growth

This isn't simply about hitting an occupancy number.

It's about understanding the market, spotting opportunities before others do, building commercially confident teams and creating a leasing strategy that delivers both strong performance and an outstanding student experience .

If you're ready to take your PBSA leasing experience to a national portfolio, we'd love to hear from you.