A Shift In PBSA, Student Protests And The Conference Season

In this week's episode:
✔️Are we seeing a shift in PBSA – did prices go too high, too soon?
✔️Will we see student protests?
✔️Should you spend money on marketing if sales are going well?
✔️The conference season – what to expect and how to prepare
✔️The big Homes for Students news – and what does this mean for the market?

Housed: The Shared Living Podcast aims to bring the latest news, views and insights to the shared living sector.

Each week, Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists and Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions that aren't often asked. This podcast is for anyone who works in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the individual hosts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to Housed, the shared living podcast. This is episode 13. We hope you are enjoying it. I'm Jeannie Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

I'm Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy.

SPEAKER_01: 0:14

And I'm Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists. Right, so what's the news this week? Yeah, unusually I've kind of not been out of the office a huge amount, lots of desk-based work, lots of working with our clients on marketing strategies, marketing budgets, just business as usual really. Did have a really lovely day in Bristol last week. We're working on a secret project and we met a couple of people there. We met Thule from Student Crowd and we met Jenny from Unite, which were really great catch-ups and obviously we were able to chew the fat of the market, although that wasn't the primary we for our visit and I got to stay in Dini's lovely house in the Somerset countryside so it was it was nice to be able to sit next to each other and do a couple of calls and actually work next to each other as we're a complete remote team so it happens very rarely. It was it was nice to have a Somerset meetup and a Bristol meetup and I think I've said this before actually because I'm often in London I'm always happy to go meet with people in London but I know there's quite a few of our sector in the southwest and I'm quite keen to get a bit of a network together for the southwest so I can get Sarah down here a bit more often so if anyone does want to join my southwest network please give me a shout. Dan what's news with you?

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

I've been up in Glasgow with a potential new client which was exciting gave me a chance to look around the city as well it's a city I know well from Nido Days with Nido St. James and Boyce House, as they were then, now part of Canvas and Abodus. And yeah, that city has gone from strength to strength. A bit of a strange one this year, though. I'm seeing a few kind of price drops, a few people with occupancy challenges as well now. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes. The rent's been so strong there. And I think it's probably slightly overcooked, but it'll still be a good market. The universities are all very good, but equally, students are starting to vote with their feet, I think, when it comes to cost of living and the cost of accommodation. And when you've had two 15% at least price rises in two years, then that's going to start having a bit of an impact. But yeah, that was a really good, positive visit. Thoroughly enjoyed it. And hopefully I'll be able to talk a bit more about that fairly soon. And the rest of it, as we said, just before we press record, I'm slammed with work. It's actually doing the reports. I'm very good at the business development side of things. It's then actually getting down to doing the work that is so time consuming. It's especially when the clients in particular want my input rather than me kind of farming it out. So I do need to get to a stage where I can take on more people rather than just having it being my input all the time. It's the constant issue that we all face as consultants. I think we talked about it a little bit last week in terms of being very much in demand and only having so many hours in the day. So yeah, it's been fitting in report writing with the ongoing client work that I do but yeah got some really exciting things upcoming so looking looking pretty good from that side of things.

SPEAKER_01: 3:16

I think that's what we find with our business as well, is that we've worked collectively in the industry for so long. We've got a fantastic team of marketeers working for us, but they don't necessarily have the depth of knowledge and expertise in the shared living space that we do. So we really have to balance, like you said, the business development and working with clients and what we can do and actually what our specialised team are much better at. And a lot of clients do sort of demand our time and our expertise and our advice, which maybe it's easier for us to do because there's two of us. We can share the calls and share the meetings. Although most people only ever see us together, we do do things separately as well. And we do have a fantastic team. So yeah, Dan, you need to hire some people. Apply

SPEAKER_00: 4:07

here. I do. It takes a while to find your sweet spot, though, doesn't it? In the sense of I started student housing consultancy trying to do all things to all people. And that worked quite well with a couple of good contracts. But now I'm at the stage where I've honed my skill sets and my services so that investors know that I typically sit between investors and third party operators or joint venture partners and operators know that I can do that on their behalf too. And I can perform those sort of business reviews, property reviews in a similar way to you do on the sales and marketing side. in particular, and also look at systems reviews and ESG as well. So it's just really getting the word out there, trying to let people know exactly what I do, and then say no to those things that I either know that I'm not going to have time for, or that just aren't in my skill set. So I'm more than happy to point people in the right direction, rather than trying to do it all myself. But yeah, it's the juggling act of being a I really enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01: 5:13

Just wanted to come back to what you were talking about before, Dan, about Glasgow. Are you actually seeing people reducing their prices already? Because what strikes me is last year there was a massive influx, which was largely driven by first years. And obviously there was an impact of the students that were already in the city, which created a huge, huge surge in demand. But surely those first year students are now going to be second year students. A lot of those were local and have that option to actually commute. Maybe they're not on campus as much as they thought they were going to be and don't mind commuting from other parts of Scotland because surely those students are still there. I don't understand why the demand this year would be markedly different to what it was last year.

SPEAKER_00: 6:00

Yeah, I think those students are still there, technically, the ones that were taking on last year. And all universities in Glasgow made hay while the sun shone last year, definitely. Glasgow University in particular on the international front, partly to help it balance the books, because, of course, all universities are making losses on domestic students. It's a really interesting one, this, because I... I think that, yes, we have some of the PBSA, they dealt with quite a few cancellations late in the market. So as much as the occupancy levels were still very good in Glasgow, there were some late cancellations from international markets in particular in Glasgow that really hurt some of the bigger operators. And I think that plays into occupancy levels for this year. But I do also think that there is a significant opportunity issue with regards to the pricing now we and by that i mean i think some of the rents are definitely overcooked not all of them i think you know the market can tolerate a certain rise but double digit rises two or three years in a row that's pretty pretty tricky i think it was 20 odd percent last year so that's that can't be tolerated continually and and for the universities to then just expect the students to just turn up and pay whatever the university is demanding for their accommodation or PBSA operators are demanding for their accommodation. So Glasgow is an interesting market. I'm not seeing massive price reductions. I am seeing more offers than usual. And so that takes the form of cashback or various other incentives. And that's actually... I would say across the UK, I am seeing that. Glasgow isn't just an isolated case of that happening. Seeing probably a little bit of a correction with operators starting to think about their occupancy later in the market. Obviously, if you can match your occupancy and your revenue underwriting, then brilliant. But I am starting to see operators focus a little bit more on occupancy, put a few more offers out, be a little bit more aggressive in that sense. And obviously dropping prices, dropping your headline rents is sort of a last port of call. So yeah, really interesting time at the moment where operators are starting to say, hey, look, we think it's going to be a later market. Marketplaces are also saying the same thing. Well, either it is a later market, in which case, great, or those international students in particular are starting to look at other destinations. They're being a bit more discerning, looking at specific locations or Russell Group or other countries or whatever it might be. And potentially, we may have priced out some of those domestic students of certain markets. like Glasgow, where the rent has shot up double digits each year. So that's going to be an interesting one to see how that plays out. I know the universities are concerned about what that is going to mean for them and their applications. And every university needs to be wary of what that average cost is, because When students are looking at applying, they are looking at the rankings of their university. They're also then looking at the cost of accommodation. And so that is definitely something that's going to come into play. And students will start voting with their feet if a university city in particular does have rents that they feel are too high. But it remains to be seen what that level is. And I don't think we all need to be slashing prices or anything like that yet but it's just something to watch the first thing that goes is that more term sessions creep in more semesters or 43 week term sessions where the 51 week would normally be the norm and then you start to look at the offers that are coming on cash backs then they start increasing maybe a few flash sales here and there and then later on you would look at price drops. So that's just something to be mindful of. I'll be keeping an eye on that data and hopefully Richard Ward from Stu Rents and Julie at Student Crowd will be able to inform us of any of the changes ASAP. It's

SPEAKER_01: 10:05

going to be an interesting one to see how it plays out really. You know, everything we understand that the students are still there and there's a lot of data around actually following a two year ago cycle. So actually it's just more discerning students, which all credit to them. As you say, they're voting with their feet and they're using the knowledge around them about knowing that there's still rooms available that they don't need to rush and panic and make those decisions or they're finding a cheaper alternative somewhere else which we can't track and we don't know and we won't know to the end so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out but we do know that there is a shift again in new students coming in both from a domestic and international front which is going to have an impact so it's not all rosy days and I guess one of the things that we often talk about and come back to when we saw what's happening with prices is where's the threshold have we hit it have we not hit it because there is a threshold and there always will be a threshold yes people need somewhere to live but there's also only a finite amount of money that they have to do that are we surprised that there's not been more murmurings or protests or anything from the nus about the prices it feels like is it a time bomb and it's waiting and we just haven't seen it yet is it just because the prices that went really high are really quite isolated and people are clearly paying them anyway i don't know What do you guys think? Is it something that might still happen this season?

SPEAKER_00: 11:25

I'm not sure that the NUS have the resource capacity or will to stage big protests at the moment, especially against accommodation providers, even though that cost of living and the cost of accommodation is massively playing into student satisfaction and, yeah, I suppose quality of experience. I have seen something in Ireland, though, with the University of Limerick, where the head of their union effectively came down quite heavily on one accommodation operator that had increased their prices by i think 20 something percent and that was seen as intolerable by that specific union i can't remember the guy's name i spoke to him and just said well done on pushing for this can i just ask how it came about and i think that unions are quite busy with student welfare matters at the moment and aren't particularly organized through the nus or by themselves on a local level to actually do anything meaningful and i'm also not sure that there is anything that they really could do to be completely honest especially when it comes to pbsa they can you know lobby their the university estates department if the accommodation price is going too high but typically university accommodation is mirroring what's happening in the private sector so that's one of the issues that they have but doesn't feel like there's the will or the organization at the nus at the moment i obviously would love to hear from them if there is but ultimately i don't think there's a huge amount they could do anyway

SPEAKER_01: 12:51

all I mean, I think ultimately it's not an isolated problem that's just occurring in student accommodation. There's a wider housing issue going on that is affecting the rental market, affecting the housing market, although data was that actually house prices are coming down. But I think that's the problem, is that there's a bigger issue at play here that does need to be fixed. And as we've said before, we'll wait with bated breath to see what happens post the general election and how that shifts and changes, because I think ultimately it's a tumble weed effect in the sense that you've got expensive housing everywhere, that's going to have an impact on students. Yeah, I guess we continue to watch this space and see what happens next. One thing that we wanted to talk about was, so obviously we've talked about turbulent markets and we've got markets that are a bit behind or not where they want to be. We've got markets that are doing really well. And one thing that always strikes us, especially in the marketing department, is that when everything's good, people stop spending money. But actually, is that the case? Is that what we should be doing? I think the same is the opposite as well, Deanie, isn't it? It's if the market's trashed, then people also stop spending money on marketing and marketing resource. We're always the department that gets it slashed. And I think that really comes from what often we get penned as, you know, the colouring in department and the fluff And, you know, it's really why Dini and I set up this business as a property marketing strategist, because we wanted to add value back into the sector from marketing. And just thinking of it as the fluffy stuff and the colouring in department really devalues what marketing can do. And it has a knock on effect. So even if you're leasing really well, what's your brand sentiment? And it leads back into the conversation we had last week about brand awareness. And we also think that particularly with student accommodation, but the same can probably be said for other parts of the business. of the rented living sector on a cyclical basis is it's so short-sighted and actually your marketing should accumulate and accumulate and accumulate and it should be ongoing rather than this stop-start approach because people can decide to be your customer in two years or three years time and you shouldn't just be marketing for the here and now so I can understand it on a simplified basis that if your leasing is going well pull back on marketing and obviously there's certain ways you know I would totally agree with pulling back on something like PPC because why would you be spending money on clicks if you've got no rooms available that makes absolutely no commercial sense whatsoever but there are certain things there's certain bits of brand awareness and PR and experiential that I actually think that you should continue 24 7 365 days of the year because that actually is your backbone to marketing for consecutive years.

SPEAKER_00: 15:34

You're right to break it down within marketing I I think the performance marketing and your PPC ads and maybe even your marketplaces, they typically are one of the first things to stop. And then maybe you might have brand awareness, et cetera, slashed, or I wouldn't recommend slashing experiential at all. But I do think that there's something to be said for maintaining a certain amount of consistency, particularly with the experiential side, with events, with that brand awareness and PR, because it's difficult to track the ROI on those but we all know that we need them and yes you can if you're filling up and you know you're going to fill reduce your Google spend but know that that will affect your SEO and your Google page rank as well that's one of the things that I've seen a definite correlation in particular working with marketplaces that whenever PPC stops with Google in particular the organic page rankings drop as well so that organic search traffic drops too so it's a tricky one to marry up. And then it's the same with marketplaces. They're desperate for consistency. They want to make sure that they can have consistent bookings going throughout the year, whether times are good or bad. And they can't get that at the moment because operators have felt for the last two years, they've been in a really strong position. So they've reduced a lot of the potential for the marketplaces, in particular from domestic students. And that's really put some business cases in serious jeopardy from an investment standpoint. And that's one of the reasons why we've seen such investment into the marketplace sector. So yes, every operator does need to show consistency, but they also need to show their investors that they are watching the P&L very, very closely. And so I think that it's finding that balance between knowing what's going to really cost you in maybe two years, three years time, if you reduce brand awareness or the experiential, and then the reviews drop and people don't realize where they are, what you do, compared to to some of the potential performance marketing whereby you know that that is driven, that is effectively trying to drive people to book that call to action marketing. That's what can fall away and reasonably quickly. But yeah, it's all about balance.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

I'm going to take it a step back and I think that there's still, and I don't think it's just in our sector, actually. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine that works in publishing who has got a consultant come in to kind of help them with their business strategy. And she was saying, oh, I actually work in marketing and my instant reaction was like well yeah if you're marketing marketing and business strategy is so intrinsically linked that if you're marketing don't know what your business strategy is it's not going to happen and I think there is still a real reputational issue with marketing that it is seen as so much more transactional when actually it doesn't it starts with strategy and your business strategy your marketing strategy are intrinsically linked and they should be working together so it's not about necessarily how you're performing in the moment it's about what your wider objectives is and how How are you going to market to get there? And I think we still have a lot of work to do in raising the reputation and awareness of marketing and its powers in driving the business forward. As I think I said a couple of weeks ago, you know, those big brands don't spend millions of pounds on marketing and brand awareness marketing to waste their money. They do it for a reason. And I think that the more that people understand the power of marketing and the strategy behind marketing, the better value they get from it. But also, if everything is rosy, do the marketing team ever get congratulated for that? No. But in And it's like, if the sales are going well, then isn't it because marketing has done such a great job, but instead you just get told that, okay, we're going to slash your marketing budget now, not the recognition that the marketeers deserve for getting a business in that place in the first

SPEAKER_00: 19:28

place. It is a thankless task being a marketeer, as I well know, but we've got to show that consistency in good times and bad. And PBSA and the residential living sectors, shared living sectors, they are resilient. I think there just has to be that that foundation of what a marketing strategy just has to have that you can't pull back on. And whether that's brand awareness or experiential or whatever it might be, it's knowing what levers that you can pull as and when, and not just thinking, okay, we're at 90%. We think we're going to sell out completely can the marketing budget. There's a lot of investors that do that do that. And it can cost in sort of two to three years time. I've seen that firsthand. So yeah, it's just, again, it's just finding that balance, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01: 20:12

We're going to gossip talk about the conference season in a minute but just to make a segue into that I think one of the things that especially on a b2b level that people think that their marketing is going to these conferences and all and the networking piece and I know so and so so therefore that's how I get business but what they don't always realize is actually all the marketing that you're pushing out is building that profile so when you do go to this conference and go I work for this company and they go oh yeah I know that you did x and x and x and x that's all the power of marketing you can't track it you can't say what the value value of that is, but you don't get that shortened conversation of, yes, I know who you work for and I know you do this, if you haven't got that outbound marketing going on. So I think we just need to value marketing and understand its much deeper benefits than currently what we do see in the marketplace. Talking of which, conference season is approaching. I think you guys are both at LD in a couple of weeks, which is always the launch of the new season. And I think it's always good that LD is not at the end of the year whenever everyone else is at the end of the year so it's good to get it started so what we're looking forward to when it comes to to conferencing this year i'll be really interested to hear about these market conditions that we've been talking so much about on the podcast really we know that the people with the data with the numbers will be presenting and i'll be interested to see the take and the angle that they have on that you know knowing that the audience that will be at these events and the party line that potentially speakers and presenters have to to play in that but also I just I really look at it and try and contact people beforehand and try and make an effort to meet specific people face to face kind of around the specific conversations and talks on stage and we're also at UK Reef in May and that's very overwhelming and we actually are arranging to meet specific people kind of outside of the pavilion discussions because there's just too much to fit in so I think you know all of these events cost a lot of money to attend and you have to make it worth its value I think I don't think that these events are generally worth it if you're just going to sit there quietly and watch the presentations all day you've got to talk about what you've seen talk to the people that you've seen make arrangements to meet people that you want to network with and really really maximise the day to get true value out of it and it's hard work and there's so many conferences and you've kind of got to do it again and again and again over the next six months really we're gearing ourselves up as as you said dd kind of ld is the the first event but they they're happening in quick fire succession after that yeah i think it's important to not make it groundhog day and actually you do go to those events with an idea to meet different people and do different things and gain more knowledge

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

it's all about the networking from from my side of things as an operator or an investor you want to go to these events and Understand what best practice looks like, what the next innovation is, what the future is going to look like. Can you do some crystal ball gazing? It shouldn't just be about, well, this is the exact, you know, this is the past, et cetera. We've got to make sure that you are understanding what the performance is to date and, you know, what each city is looking like so that you can compare it. Then you've got to think about what best practice, innovation. Can you learn that from these panels? At some of these events, definitely you can. There's some really good panelists who some really exciting topics that are going to be covered. And it's not just a case of having it being basic, like what does ESG mean for PBSA or for co-living or for BTR or whatever it might be. It's really trying to make sure that you can be innovative and that you can take learnings and actions from these conferences and then go and put them into practice. And from an investor standpoint or from a third-party operator that's trying to win business or whatever it might be, It's all about the networking for me. And that's why I really like the sort of smaller round table events like the Stew Rents one that's just been and gone. Really small event, but really well run, as you'd expect from Richard Ward and Michael and the team at Stew Rents, but just gave a really good opportunity for networking and having a good chat and talking about the industry quite candidly, quite openly. And that's different from some of the bigger events, of course, in terms of the overall agenda, because they're there to kind of showcase what's going on within the industry. And the panel discussions give a good opportunity for some question and answer or some back and forth. And you might get a bit of transparency there, but generally people are reasonably guarded as to how they're doing. But the events that are coming up, you've got LD events. I know that I'm speaking at the ESG one the day after the main LD events conference for student housing. And then you've got OPERI, the Operational Real Estate Festival. That should be a really good one trying to open up more to pbsas are definitely worth looking that up class conference uk reef property week later on in the year it's it's all starting to stack up in terms of speaking engagements or helping out with panels and speakers etc but it's an expensive business unfortunately getting into each of these events can cost anything up to one and a half thousand pounds and you look at uk reef is is is a new one for me i've not I've not seen it before, really. I've heard people talk about it, but not in a real sort of student housing focus or a co-living focus. And that seems to be very much what people are talking about this year. So that's going to be an interesting one. I haven't booked my ticket yet. Tried to blag a ticket or a media ticket, but was told in no uncertain terms, no, your followers on LinkedIn don't qualify you for a free ticket, which is fair enough. I thought I'd ask and I don't try and pull that card too often. So I unsure as to whether I'll be there or not but I know you guys have been pretty pivotal in some of the conversations that they're having and speakers etc so yeah be interested to see how that goes.

SPEAKER_01: 26:22

And I'm going to have FOMO when you both go to LD events in a couple of weeks so you'll have to let me know how it goes. It would be remiss of us to not speak about this week because obviously there was big news that came out around the acquisition of Homes for Students and I think it was the big news of the week so I think it kind of warrants us to have a quick discussion about what that means to the market, what that means for management companies, what the impact might be. Obviously, congratulations to all involved in that deal. It's a big deal. Big congratulations to everyone there. But yeah, just wanted to kind of have a finish on a little bit discussion about what we think that's going to do to the market.

SPEAKER_00: 27:00

Yeah, so this is Far East Orchard, a Singaporean fund acquiring 49% of homes for students for£17.6 million. It's great that that has been announced. And the it's transparent and that they haven't buried a press release somewhere. And it's just really good to see it's a real measure of success for Martin and the team at Homes for Students. They've built an incredible business over the last five years and really become the dominant third party management operator through various different means as well. They are very aggressive when it comes to business development. And by that, I mean that every development feasibility study that comes across my desk, whether it's and acquisition or development typically has some kind of homes for students, OPEX or revenue budget attached to it. And that must mean that they're getting in very early in that process to sow the seed and really sort of make sure that they are the mobilization or the development operator of choice. And that was previously team of three. You had CRM, Fresh and Collegiate that used to be the big three and homes for students very much have stolen a march on each of those to really dominate the sector in that way. I'm not convinced that that's actually good for the sector, to be completely honest. The fact that it feels like it's dominated quite so heavily by one party. I mean, if they were doing a crap job, then I'm sure we'd all be up in arms. But the fact is that they've got good people there. They've got good systems that they've built. And they've obviously done a good job for each of their investors. And so I do think there's a lot to be said, for diversifying the pool of third-party operators. But it's tough. It's tough to make money. I remember back in the day of launching the third-party operations for Nido, really, really low margins. And I got lucky on one deal that had good margins and an NOI bonus uplift. But it's really hard to make money in the third-party space. Quite a lot of clients come to me and say, I want to scale my third-party business. And for some of them, I can see the writing on the wall straight away. And it's a case of, well, do you really want to? Do you want this? This is a really cutthroat business. And I think that Homes for Students have done a brilliant job of scaling to that 40-odd thousand beds and really should be commended for where they've got to. It'd be really interesting to see where that goes to now and how many beds they can keep over the next 18 months to two years, I would say, and how many they can expand by. Because Speaking to a lot of third party operators, I know that they're all after the same thing. They all want to get more beds on board. Scale is where profitability lies. And that is a major problem for each of them when it seems there's quite a lot of attrition in the market so far. But I think that investors need to be looking around more. I think they need to be moving operators more. I think for those brand agnostic buildings in particular, there's no problem with changing operators a little bit more frequently. So I would like like to see a little bit more trading when it comes to investors moving operators. But yeah, great deal. And money-wise, fair play. That is a good deal for a lot of hard work that Homes for Students have put in. So well done to them.

SPEAKER_01: 30:24

And I agree with you. I think that having more options for investors is a great thing. But when we've got companies that are doing it so well that are going to that scale, is that going to put other people off going into it? Like you say, it is a hard market to make money and it's not it's not an easy one so is that the risk that actually it's going to be a lot harder for people to get into this market now

SPEAKER_00: 30:46

i think so but there are some good newcomers i would say as they were you know but to be fair homes for students is pretty much a newcomer albeit they started with a decent amount of beds but it's only really the last five years that they've kicked off but the Host as well, of course, have a third party. There's so many out there that are starting to do more third party or want to do more third party and are putting the word out there. And that's alongside some of the bigger companies as well. It'll be interesting to see what happens with CRM and Yugo and how that all pans out. I think that gives Yugo a really good opportunity and a good footprint because having bought CRM from Core Estate, it's primed and ready for a bit more competition to come into that marketplace. So I would expect to see more competition for sure but my concern is that I'm starting to see that it's a little bit of a race to the bottom again margins are starting to come down and I don't want it to go back to 2017-18 where I saw those management fees at 1.5% on a couple of places just because that particular operator was just desperate to scale at all costs so I won't name them but yeah hopefully everybody every operator knows their USP knows where they're strong, either geographically or demographically or in any other sense, and can articulate that really well. And that there's that consistency in the management fees, because we don't want to see those management fees dropping, ideally, below 4%. I see a lot coming in around the sort of 4%, 5% mark, but it really varies. It can drop below that. It can be quite a lot higher than that. So it just depends entirely on the property. It's ultimately just a case of, what is each operator going to tolerate to scale? And they each have to ask themselves that question. I just really hope that it's not a race to the bottom that puts companies in financial jeopardy again.

SPEAKER_01: 32:50

And I think you made a really good point actually on that investors can think about how they brand their asset in a smart way that means actually it is easier for them to move operators and see what else is out there, which at the moment is holding a lot of people back. So I think There are opportunities and there is a brand strategy that enables you to do that, but you need to start it from the outset and you need to think of it from the beginning with a view to be able to move and shift when you need to. I

SPEAKER_00: 33:18

think you don't know what you don't know as well. As an investor, you're reliant on what the operator tells you. Is that always going to be the right thing? Well, it might be the right thing for the operator, but not necessarily for the investor. And that's certainly not me saying that operators work against investors. It's just that Some of these operators are at the scale where they have multiple properties in each city. How do you prioritize those? Yes, you can run it on a hub and spoke model, which might save you a little bit on the OPEX on staffing, but is that at the cost of student satisfaction where you don't have your own GM, you have a city manager or whatever? Are you going to be missing out on certain deals that you should have been really proactive for, whether it's a NOMS or whether it's some sales velocity being slightly slow? I think that that's certainly something to think about. And that's a good opportunity for me to plug my services. That is what I do for investors. I sit between the third-party operator and the investor, and I make sure that the third-party operator is considering all options to improve revenue, improve occupancy, and drive down operating costs, or at least manage operating costs, not at the expense of the student experience. That has to be first and foremost. So, yeah, that's something that I'm seeing. I'm also working with operators to manage the investors as well and to help with reporting and communication too. So I think there needs to be a little bit more shopping around. I'd like to think that there will be now. But yeah, it's certainly going to be a tough one to navigate for those third-party marketplaces that either aren't particularly well capitalized, because that's what investors are looking for. They're looking for security. And there's a few companies that can offer that. And they're also looking for that consistency. It doesn't necessarily have to be spectacular performance as long as you hit business plan. And I think what we need to get back to is that third party really should be providing best practice. It doesn't just have to be your standard operations.

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And seeing as you said it, Dan, we can also help with brand strategy. Talk to us. Obviously, we will be back again with another episode next week. So thank you, everyone, for listening. Do keep listening. Do keep getting in touch. If there's anything you want us to talk about, anything that we haven't talked about that we shouldn't be talking about, then just give one of us a shout out by all the various means of communication that we have nowadays and we will do that. But thanks again and we will catch you for episode 14.