The emergence of purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) as a ‘global’ asset class has physically and socially transformed university cities through ‘new-build studentification’ implicated in the financialization of urban space. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the risk inherent in this asset's reliance on a narrow submarket, as students' domestic and international mobilities were temporarily disrupted. We interrogate PBSA providers' response to the pandemic through the analysis of real estate consultancy reports, firms' annual reports and other investor-facing documents, in Africa, Australia, Europe and North America, demonstrating how the financialization of this niche sector is sustained through crisis. Tactics include building goodwill to expand market share, temporarily reorienting towards domestic students and operational strategies to cut costs and increase revenues. Despite the sector's optimism, these approaches amplify existing trends of finance-driven new-build studentification in university cities, characterized by uneven development, the privatization of student housing and deepening class and age segregation.