University Living housing scraper

Scrapes public student-housing listings and property detail pages (address, prices, amenities, ratings, images) from universityliving.com, covering any searched city. Results are returned as a structured JSON dataset and can be exported to CSV or Excel.

Target website: universityliving.com

⚖️ Legality of this actor

This actor only collects data that is already publicly visible on universityliving.com — no login, paywall, or private content is accessed. Scraping publicly available data is generally considered legal (see hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn as precedent); the user remains responsible for complying with the target site's Terms of Service and applicable laws (e.g. GDPR/CCPA) where personal data is involved.

💡 Use Case

Landlords, housing agents, university accommodation departments, and market researchers who need an up-to-date, machine-readable view of the student-housing supply, prices, and ratings across University Living cities.

🏭 Industry

Real Estate, Proptech, Higher Education, Market Research

📤 Output

Structured JSON dataset (exportable to CSV/Excel) with one record per property, including property and room details (name, description, address, geo, telephone, prices, rating), a combined property + room image gallery, and a per-room breakdown.

🌐 Domain

Student accommodation / housing property data extraction (University Living).

🏷️ Label

student-housing, property-scraper, rental-price-tracker, real-estate, university-living

✨ Features

• Property listing + detail extraction — collects every property found for a searched city, plus full detail-page data
• Full room + gallery data — merges every room's detail (title, category, rates, bed/bathroom types) and all room images into a single gallery per property
• Pagination support — keeps fetching further results once the first page cannot fill the max-results budget
• Proxy support — runs through the Apify proxy (datacenter by default); the group and enabled state are user-configurable
• Cross-run caching — give a caching-dataset name so property URLs scraped in an earlier run are skipped (unique items only)

🔧 Input Configuration

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	Array (request list)	✅	—	City/search pages and property detail pages on universityliving.com
maxResults	Integer	—	3	Maximum number of properties to scrape per start URL
scrapeAllFromSitemap	Boolean	—	false	When enabled, ignores startUrls and scrapes all properties
caching	String	—	—	Name of a dataset used to persist scraped property URLs so the same URLs are skipped on later runs
proxyConfiguration	Object (proxy)	—	datacenter, enabled	Proxy rotation configuration; proxy groups are selectable

Supported URL types:

• City/search page, e.g. https://www.universityliving.com/united-kingdom/city/nottingham
• Property detail page, e.g. https://www.universityliving.com/united-kingdom/nottingham/property/nottingham-square

📦 Output

The dataset exposes a single view (Overview) that shows the core fields of the scraped properties in a compact table.

Sample output:

{
    "url": "https://www.universityliving.com/united-kingdom/nottingham/property/talbot-street",
    "name": "Study Inn Talbot Street",
    "description": "Study Inn Talbot Street offers student accommodation in Nottingham.",
    "streetAddress": "Goldsmith Street, Nottingham",
    "locality": "Nottingham",
    "countryCode": "GB",
    "postalCode": "NG1",
    "latitude": 52.9549,
    "longitude": -1.1472,
    "priceCurrency": "GBP",
    "lowPrice": 160,
    "highPrice": 316,
    "lowestWeeklyPrice": 160,
    "featuredImage": "https://cdn.universityliving.com/cms/…/property.jpg",
    "imageCount": 34,
    "images": [
        "https://cdn.universityliving.com/cms/…/property.jpg",
        "https://cdn.universityliving.com/cms/…/room-1a.jpg",
        "https://cdn.universityliving.com/cms/…/room-1b.jpg"
    ],
    "rooms": [
        {
            "roomId": "315012",
            "title": "Gold Studio",
            "category": "Studio",
            "minRate": 209,
            "maxRate": 250,
            "area": "17-18",
            "areaUnit": "sqm",
            "bedType": "3/4th Bed",
            "bathroomType": "Private",
            "kitchenType": "Private",
            "images": [
                "https://cdn.universityliving.com/cms/…/room-1a.jpg",
                "https://cdn.universityliving.com/cms/…/room-1b.jpg"
            ],
            "rates": [
                { "tenancy": "51 weeks", "price": 209, "priceUnit": "£/week", "currency": "£", "total": "£10659" }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

💡 Uses of This Data

• Supply & vacancy monitoring — track how many student-accommodation properties a city lists over time.
• Price benchmarking — analyse weekly rent levels by city, room type, and provider.
• Competitor / partner research — compare an accommodation portfolio against the University Living catalogue.
• International-arrival planning — housing teams compile verified off-campus options for incoming students.
• Lead enrichment — housing marketers enrich CRM records with locations, prices, and images.

🚀 How to Use

1. Sign up for a free Apify account — includes $5 monthly credit.
2. Open the actor page and click Try for free.
3. Fill in the Input fields (at least one startUrls entry is required).
4. Click Start and wait for the run to complete.
5. Download results from the Output tab in JSON, CSV, or Excel format.

You can also run this actor via the Apify API or integrate it directly into your workflows using Zapier, Make, or n8n.

📝 Notes

• Proxy recommended for large-scale scraping — For high-volume runs or full-scrape mode, keep the Apify datacenter proxy enabled (or switch to residential) to avoid blocks.
• Data consistency with proxies — Because the actor outputs live, location-sensitive data (prices, availability, ratings), values can vary slightly by region and between runs depending on the viewing proxy IP.
• API integration — This actor can be called as an API from any automation platform (Zapier, Make, n8n, custom scripts).
• Cross-run deduplication — Set the caching-dataset input to scrape only properties not already collected in an earlier run.

💬 Support & Contact

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please open an issue

You can also find more of our actors on the Actor Flow .