The Turku Student Village Foundation’s (TYS) year 2023 has now been summarised. The demand for TYS apartments and the customer satisfaction remained at a high level in 2023.
TYS year 2023 once again proved that there is a great deal of demand for affordable, comfortable, high-quality student apartments in Turku. Reviewed on month-by-month basis, an average of hundred tenants more lived in TYS apartments in 2023 than in the previous year. At the end of the year, the foundation’s apartments housed a total of 6,858 people.
Thanks to the high demand, the economic occupancy rate of TYS apartments rose to 97.8 per cent in 2023, which is 0.6 percentage points more than in the previous year. This can be considered an excellent figure, especially considering the typically high rate of tenant turnover of student apartments.
“The attractiveness of Turku and its institutes of higher education is at a high level, which also reflects on the demand for student apartments. Developing the eastern side of the Student Village is a long-term spearhead project with the aim of helping us meet the future growth prospects,” says Risto Siilos, the CEO of TYS.
The reference planning of the Student Village East was started in 2023 and will be continued in 2024. Based on the preliminary review, the City of Turku has decided to include Student Village East in its land use planning programme.
Everything revolves around keeping tenants satisfied
TYS monitors the satisfaction of its tenants at a monthly basis through customer satisfaction surveys sent to different housing locations, as well as with moving-in and moving-out surveys. The customer satisfaction survey reached the tenants of all housing locations over the year. The tenants were asked to, for example, assess the different areas of TYS operations on a scale from 1 to 5.
In 2023, the tenants gave high grades to areas such as TYS’s customer service (4.12), the quality of apartments (4.03) and communications (4.03). Lengthening tenancy periods are also a sign of customer satisfaction – in 2023, the average length of tenancy in a TYS apartment was two years and four months.
“Our tenants are experts of their own housing, so we try to carefully listen to what they have to say. It is great to see that we have done things right in many areas,” says Pirjo Lipponen-Vaitomaa, Director of Customer Relations and Communications.
Towards more sustainable housing
Mitigation of climate change is one of the key sustainability goals of TYS. TYS aims to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of its buildings, increase the use of renewable energy sources and implement building technology solutions improving energy efficiency when possible.
The annual carbon footprint of the foundation’s operations has been calculated together with Sitowise Oy since 2020. In 2023, the carbon footprint of the foundation’s operations was 2,963 tonnes, which is about 29 % less than in the reference year 2020, and around 23 % less than in 2022.
The carbon footprint was reduced especially due to the decreased emission factor of district heating, as well as the lack of any new construction or renovation projects in 2023. Additionally, actions such as the solar panels installed in Nummenranta and the Block 5 of Student Village through the RESPONSE project have increased the energy efficiency of these locations and the amount of renewable energy used.
You can read the Turku Student Village Foundation’s annual report and sustainability report here.
The report also includes the Foundation’s financial statements for the year 2023.
