Fresh Brand Guidelines: The Student & Build-to-Rent Manager Owned by Watkin Jones

A management company with a short, bright name.

Fresh is a British accommodation management company that runs student and rental buildings on behalf of institutional clients, according to its owner’s annual report. The register at Companies House shows the main operating company, now Fresh Property Group Ltd, as incorporated on 28 May 2010, first as Fresh Student Management Limited; it was renamed Fresh Student Living Ltd in November 2011 and took its current name in October 2017. The register classifies its business as other accommodation and as the management of real estate on a fee or contract basis.

The student name stayed in public use for years, and the old freshstudentliving.co.uk address now forwards to the brand’s current site, thisisfresh.com. Under its current name, Fresh manages build-to-rent apartment buildings as well as purpose-built student accommodation, and its Exeter scheme The Gorge was shortlisted as a co-living community in 2025.

The decisive change in ownership came in 2016. Watkin Jones plc, the residential developer listed on London’s AIM market, says in its 2025 annual report that its intangible assets relate to the acquisition of Fresh Property Group Ltd, formerly Fresh Student Living Limited, which the group acquired in the financial year ended 30 September 2016. Since then Fresh has been the group’s in-house management arm, and the same report lists a set of Fresh companies among Watkin Jones’s subsidiaries, including Fresh Property Group Ireland Limited and This Is Fresh Limited.

Watkin Jones describes itself as the UK’s leading developer of purpose-built student accommodation, saying in the 2025 report that it has delivered around 51,000 student beds across 152 schemes over the last 25 years. Within the group, Fresh handles ongoing management: the group’s website calls it a standalone operational partner offering lettings, compliance, marketing, customer experience and finance services for build-to-rent and student schemes, and says Fresh combines sector expertise with national reach. The group’s investment-case page adds that Fresh gives it consumer insight into what residents want, and that a team focused on design innovation uses that feedback when planning new buildings.

Beds under management, not buildings owned.

Because Fresh manages on behalf of clients, its size is counted in beds and schemes under contract rather than in property owned. Watkin Jones’s 2025 annual report calls Fresh a market-leading independent manager of residential-for-rent assets across the UK and Ireland, with 21,019 beds and units under management across 66 schemes at the end of September 2025, up from 18,656 units across 58 schemes a year earlier. The group’s investor pages give a slightly later figure of 21,438 units and 34 individual clients.

The 2025 report describes how that portfolio moves. During the year Fresh took on 3,781 beds across 13 schemes, including a 1,347-bed portfolio in the Republic of Ireland, while 1,404 beds across five schemes left its books, four of them because the buildings were sold and management passed in-house or to another provider. The report also notes that Fresh is the preferred property manager for the Curlew Student Trust and Curlew Student Trust 2, Guernsey-registered funds set up to invest in student accommodation, in which Fresh Property Group holds carried interest.

Fresh measures itself publicly through resident surveys. The 2025 report gives a student net promoter score of +35 in the Global Student Living Index, against a benchmark of +20 for other large private operators, and says Fresh was rated Platinum as an operator for the second year running, with 10 properties rated Platinum, 20 Gold and 14 Silver. More than 3,700 residents took part in that survey.

Named buildings carry the awards. According to the same report, Fresh’s The Waterways scheme won the individual-property award at the Global Student Living Awards; at the StudentCrowd Student Voice Awards, Ty Nant was ranked first in Swansea, with Benson Yard second and Calico third in Liverpool; and The Gorge in Exeter was a finalist in two HomeViews categories in February 2025.

Design and documentation.

Student housing operators sell a room, a building and a city at once, and their websites are built around that order. Booking sites usually begin with a search by country, city, university or residence: Yugo’s menu runs city by city across 14 countries, and Unite Students keeps a page for each UK city it serves. Room types are named in plain terms, such as studio, en-suite or non en-suite, and the companies stress what is included in the rent rather than the architecture.

Photography does most of the selling. The operators publish their own pictures of bedrooms, shared kitchens, study rooms, gyms and lounges, and present communal space as part of the product. Apps extend the same promise after booking: Unite Students says its app handles check-in times, flatmate chat and maintenance requests, and Yugo runs programmes under its own name for residents.

Building names are a brand decision in their own right. Some operators put the brand in front of a place name, as with Yugo Adelaide City, or rename a building when it changes hands; C-VILLE Weekly reported in December 2025 that The Standard in Charlottesville would become Yugo Crestline. A large group can also run more than one consumer brand for different years of study, as Unite does with Unite Students, aimed mainly at first-years, and Hello Student, aimed at later-year, postgraduate and international students.

Behind the student-facing brands sits a second, corporate register. Listed companies, funds and joint ventures publish separate sites for investors and university partners, with timelines, portfolio maps and fund pages; Unite Group’s name GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, as its London joint-venture partner, and The Dot Group’s name Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing as a US partner of GSA. This guide treats both registers, the cheerful booking voice and the plainer corporate one, as part of each brand.

One short word over many building names.

Fresh works as an umbrella brand. The schemes named in its owner’s reports carry their own names, such as The Waterways, Ty Nant, Benson Yard, Calico and The Gorge, with Fresh as the manager. Its portfolio also changes as client buildings are sold: in 2025, four schemes left Fresh after sales, while new contracts brought others in.

The resident offer is presented through named programmes rather than amenities alone. Watkin Jones’s 2025 annual report describes Be, a wellbeing and lifestyle programme in the student schemes that helps residents settle in and make friends, with a wide range of events each week, and Belong, a residents’ club in the build-to-rent buildings with clubs, socials and other events. The same report says Fresh recruits student ambassadors across its schemes to find out what residents want and bring forward ideas for improvement.

The brand also faces investors. On the Watkin Jones website, Fresh appears under the heading “Ongoing management – powered by Fresh,” and the group says the insight Fresh gathers from residents feeds back into how it designs new developments. The same name therefore addresses residents through Be and Belong and addresses institutional clients as a management service.

For a design guide, Fresh shows how a single short word can sit above a portfolio of separately named buildings and two resident programmes without competing with them. Compare Unite Students, the UK student housing operator, and Homes for Students. For this guide we use a deep teal, mint and coral palette with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Fresh’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.