Housed: The Shared Living Podcast
Sarah Canning and Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists have teamed up with Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy to discuss the latest news, views and insights in the shared living sector.
Each episode they will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions which aren't often asked.
This podcast is a must for anyone working in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-Living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living.
Housed: The Shared Living Podcast
Is shared living ready for the AI revolution? Class Foundation Marketing Hubs, Later Living Solutions and are we Failing at Training?
Technology should be transforming the shared living sector, with AI presenting both opportunities and challenges for marketing professionals across PBSA and BTR. We explore how artificial intelligence will reshape property operations while emphasizing the human skills needed to thrive in this changing landscape. But without the right training in place, we could all end up lost.
• Class Foundation Marketing Hub brings together marketing professionals from across Europe
• AI represents a fundamental shift comparable to the invention of the internet
• Gap exists between marketing teams' AI understanding and executive leadership buy-in
• Training in property typically focuses on compliance rather than skills development
• PBSA uses "sales" terminology while BTR uses "leasing" despite describing the same function
• PRS seeing significant attrition with 290,000 rental homes leaving the sector since 2021
• BTR predicted to eventually provide 30% of private rental homes but faces supply challenges
• UK needs 30,000-50,000 new later living homes annually but only builds around 7,000
Send your questions for the final episode of the season to hello@housepodcast.com
Thank you to our season four sponsors:
MyStudentHalls - Find your ideal student accommodation across the UK.
Utopi - The smart building platform helping real estate owners protect the value of their assets.
Washstation - Leading provider of laundry solutions for Communal and Campus living throughout the UK and Ireland.
Hello everyone and welcome back to How's the Shared Living podcast. This is the 11th episode in season four and we're very grateful to have you with us every week as we update you with the latest news, views and opinions from the world of shared living. I'm Dan Smith from Resi Consultancy.
Speaker 3:I'm Deanie Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists and I'm Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists.
Speaker 1:And now a word from our headline sponsor.
Speaker 2:Season four of How's is sponsored by mystudenthallscom. List your properties, commission free and reach thousands of students searching for their university home.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much, as ever, to Dan and the team from my Student Halls. They've supported Housed since the very beginning. We love working with Dan and everyone there, and if you are not listing your properties or you have not boosted them or got that spotlight on and you need the leads, then Dan and my student halls can offer a really solid solution that will definitely deliver leads to your properties. So well worth reaching out to them if you haven't already. Also, a huge thanks to our sponsors, wash Station and Utopia. More from them a little bit later.
Speaker 1:Now we've only got one episode left of this season. As has become tradition, we are handing the last episode over to you, our listeners, so please do get in touch with all of your questions. We love this Q&A format. We know that you do too, so please do get your questions in to us. Anything, any elephants in the room that you do too, so please do get your questions into us. Anything, any elephants in the room that you want us to address, any awkward questions or any very nice, easy questions would also be appreciated as well. So please do reach out to us. Send them through as a voice note, a video. It's up to you, but let's get some really juicy topics on the agenda, please.
Speaker 1:So this week is a bit of a different week. I'm off on holiday next week, so we're recording this early, and so I wanted to have a quick chat with you, in particular, about the class foundation marketing hub. Now we we all turned up to that. I think I was expecting it to be a webinar in the sense of you just turn up and you watch people. You watch people on a panel, which I was extremely interested in because I love everything that the Glass Foundation do by effectively trying to instill best practice within the industry. So, for this being about sales and marketing and AI in particular, obviously I was like this is right in my wheelhouse. And so when we turned up, and instantly I was on the screen just in a t-shirt and wasn't on mute and was making a cup of tea, and I was quite surprised, but I really enjoyed it. What did you guys think, sarah?
Speaker 3:well, it wasn't my first time. And being part of marketing community hub, and because Deanie and I have hosted the community sessions at the class conferences over the last few years, we're probably a little bit more prepared. And being part of the Marketing Community Hub, and because Dini and I have hosted the community sessions at the class conferences over the last few years, we were probably a little bit more prepared than you, dan, and we knew that there would be audience participation and it's a real chance to get together with members of the marketing community that work in shared living across Europe. And it was fantastic to see so many different faces from so many different organisations on there. I think there were some big personalities, particularly from the UK. Probably us and David from Homes for Students probably dominated some of those conversations, but we did let other people get a word in, so hopefully it worked well. Yeah, I found it really, really interesting. It was brilliantly hosted by Soraya, who kind of had to moderate, you know, a virtual community hub, which I think is quite a difficult task, and make sure that people are heard and listened to, and she kept the conversation kind of moving on as well. So I mean, I know, dan, this is kind of your specialist subject. It's not my specialist subject, so I'm always willing to learn more about it and I mean the knowledge that you know that David has is phenomenal and I was, you know, writing lots of notes of everything that he said and what I contributed to the conversation is kind of what I maintain.
Speaker 3:Really, I think for a lot of people this kind of technology is still quite scary and out of reach and I think partly it's because as a sector we're generally not very good at technology. I know everyone thinks they are, but they're not. You know, a lot of businesses aren't even using CRMs. A lot of the property management systems, a lot of the booking systems are woefully out of date. So kind of then saying hey, let's move on to AI feels potentially a little bit scary for people. So I think the more we talk about it, the more we share best practice. We can kind of dispel those myths. And they're not AI I can't remember who said it on the call, but it's not a separate thing.
Speaker 3:You might have said it, dan it's just like the evolution of, like the internet or websites or Wi-Fi. You know it works alongside everything else. So I think if people kind of get their heads around that, that you kind of you don't have to like nail one part of technology before you add in AI, it kind of it needs to work, kind of alongside everything that people are already doing and using. Really, what did you think, do you need?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, first I just want to say a big thank you to kelly ann and the team, the class, for giving marketing that space and time to share best practice, engage and work with their colleagues across europe, because often marketing does get forgotten. So a big thank you to the class Foundation team for that. No, I thought it was a great session and I think what I was reflecting on during and after the session, which is half the battle, is that we need, as a marketing sector, to go and talk to leaders about this and about this change and about this impact, because it's going to need budget, it's going to need change and it's going to need budget. It's going to need change and it's going to need support. And I think I think we are making progress with marketing and the role that it can play and what it's needed to be able to support the business better. But I still often think there's a gap between people's understanding. I think there's still a lot of people in the world that think I just do marketing, anyone can do marketing, and they actually don't think about these intricacies of changing technology, how ai is going to change. You know, if you think about how websites revolutionize how we market. Ai is going to do the same thing and people have got to who don't work in marketing have to be taught that so you can get the budget to be able to shift and change and and celebrate those things.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that I didn't realise was chat. Gpt is run off Bing, but everyone spends all their marketing budget on Google, not Bing. They don't think about Bing. They don't say but if someone went to a marketing leader and said, right, I'm going to go invest in Bing, they go why are you doing that? Everyone does this actually on Google, don't do that. So we've got to educate people to say, actually, this, don't do that. So we've got to educate people to say, actually, this is about future proofing and yeah, you might not get the benefit this year, but you will get the benefit in two or three or four or five years time and it's what we need to be doing. And without those conversations to that executive team, I worry that marketing once again is going to fall behind completely agree.
Speaker 1:I've got some notes from that conversation so I've got d Dave, humans gaps, berlin Wall and scary and I think kind of addressing those in order the people on the call were. It was great. And again, I didn't think I was going to be speaking on the call. I didn't think I could contribute, I was just there to listen. I was quite excited to do that and then obviously had to sit on my hands to not interject at various different times, with AI being such a passion of mine.
Speaker 1:Soraya did a brilliant job. Everyone contributed in some way, shape or form. She involved everyone and I think that was a really important. That's typical of the class foundation events. They are very inclusive.
Speaker 1:Dave Chatterton from Homes for Students was on there and he is, I think, the most knowledgeable person on AI in the industry. I put him ahead of me and that's not me blowing my own trumpet at all. It's just that I have had to get completely immersed into AI and I want to, because I can see that this is the direction of travel. But we have a lack of Daves. We have a lack of leaders who really fully understand AI and the potential that it can bring to and the positives that it can bring to PBSA, btr, the shared living sector at all, but in any sector. And that's because AI falls into the gaps between heads of IT and marketing and sales and senior management, your CEO and your COO very rare that they're fully understanding the capabilities, and I think that's where ai companies like verba flow have an opportunity to really set their stall out and say this is the direction of travel, this is what's possible, this is how it will benefit your business and your residents or your investors or whoever, and I don't think that you know we're we're doing as good a job as we possibly can of that, but there's so gaps it's really difficult to work out who to approach, and I think where people are sort of misunderstanding what AI can do is the fact that it can bring about better resident satisfaction, and that is I mean that in the sense of it can instantly give them the answers that they want. They don't have to wait for a sales team or for anyone else to resolve something.
Speaker 1:What I think we're going to need to focus on as a sector in particular is that property level staffing. I think you are going to need to be focusing on that community curation. That's what AI is also going to enable and empower. But I think that there has to be more of a focus, even more now, because I think everybody is very aware that you're only as good as your site teams and your reputation is only as good as you know how your general manager treats the residents and the rest of the teams there. But I think that's going to be where there is more of a focus from operators. As central operations become streamlined and AI is definitely going to help with that, it's going to get back to the front line and I think that that's where the focus is really going to be.
Speaker 1:So that is scary. That's scary for everyone, both at a central level and at a property level, because you're going to be grappling with new technologies and we know that real estate is actually quite slow moving. Everyone likes to think that they're really innovative. I don't really think that many operators, and certainly not universities, are actually truly innovative, because no one's really fully reinvented that booking journey, the customer journey, and I think that's a bit of a. I think that is where we can be quite slow as an industry.
Speaker 1:But there are the opportunities out there now to reinvent, to innovate, and I think that my last point, where I put Berlin Wall. This for me and Dave said this there are three sort of major events that have happened in his lifetime it's the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's the invention of the internet and it is AI, and I think that is really telling and that is why it's so scary. This has so much potential. It's not just, like I said it, on the call, I think it's not just like mini discs or VR headsets, which is just another fad. This is here to stay and it will totally, totally change the way every single job in the world is done, and I think that is scary. I totally get it. I'm trying to sell it in gently, but we are at the stage now where we just have to say right, the work, as we know, has changed completely and we can either adapt or we will die. That is very much how I see it.
Speaker 3:I just want to go back to something that Dini said which I think has kind of overarching kind of impact really is about kind of training and development as well as budgets. And you know, I think we see that a lot with clients that we work with is that people are in jobs and then their skills aren't necessarily developed, and you know that should be the case at every level, and whether that's like formal training or whether it's kind of permission to attend webinars and the community hub you know, I'm sure the class foundation would have loved to have seen even more people from the marketing community on there.
Speaker 3:It's an hour over lunchtime but, you know, do people feel empowered to be able to take an hour out of work and that go part of their learning and development? You know, listening to podcasts, attending events etc. And you know we, we don't definitely don't see enough of that, particularly for marketing teams yeah, and I will.
Speaker 2:You've taken me back to before, kind of, as I left the sector and was setting up my own consultancy.
Speaker 2:I did go and do some work with HSBC in their technology department and one of the things I thought was amazing when I arrived and it was part of the project that I was working on to kind of run internal communications to promote this is that they their technologists, so their technology department within HSBC was given, was encouraged and told very much to spend an hour a day training and developing.
Speaker 2:They had access to a hub of you know courses, but the big thing was that if you're not taking an hour a day a week, an hour a day to learn, you're not going to be the best technologist you can be and we want the best technologists we can be and I think that is something that. Wouldn't it be amazing if actually everyone across the shared living sector just took their staff and give them a course on AI and this is how you can use AI and this is how it can be productive and this is how you know we can change how we work. So it doesn't become scary, because I think the situation we're in now is that people are thinking AI is going to take my job, whereas actually, if we empower people to know how to use AI, they can come up with ways that actually they can use AI to make their jobs more efficient, which makes them more valuable, which makes apartments more valuable.
Speaker 1:Love that. I think we do need to be taking more time out, and at Nido, we used to do I think it was two hours on a Friday morning where somebody within the company had two hours to upskill people on certain things. It might be a topic that was specific to their role, that everybody needed to understand about, from procurement to marketing to sales, to everything in between but it might have just been a passion of theirs, and I think that's where we've really got to invest in the teams. Again, it comes back to the fact that, yes, you'll have AI there, which will be, you know, streamlining everything and improving efficiencies across every single department, but if we do not upskill our people and make sure that we have the right training in place, the right support and we empower them, like you said, sarah, to go to the class foundation, marketing hubs or investment hubs or whatever it might be, then we're going to be sorely lacking, because this is a people business. As much as we're trying to be innovative and prop tech is such a big focus, it's still very much a people business and we have to invest in those people.
Speaker 1:I don't see enough focus on training. I think that everybody is very much on the treadmill and I know you guys have got a lot of sales training and you've done. You know I've heard of you talk about doing a few this year. I feel like every single operator needs to be doing that pretty consistently, not just in sales training, but allowing that upskilling. But allowing that upskilling and that can be part of a personal development plan where you can just showcase that you've done an online course in ESG or AI or whatever it might be. Are you seeing much in the sector, sarah or Dini, in terms of training, not just in sales, in what you're offering, but in anything else out there as well?
Speaker 3:I think what I see is the sector is really good on the compliance side of things. I think what I see is the sector is really good on the compliance side of things. You know, I think there's a lot of health and safety training. I think there's a lot of mental health first aid training, which is brilliant, but I think there's not a lot of I don't know how to put it really the skills that are needed in some of these roles, you know, that are non-compliant, that are absolutely essential.
Speaker 3:And going back to what you used to say yes, we do do sales training and I think we have talked about it on previous podcasts the word sales is quite scary and I think people think why do I need sales training? I'm not a salesperson and we're working on a webinar at the moment that we'll be talking about this a little bit more. But we've uncovered that in in btr, they don't use the word sales, they use the word leasing. Now, in pbsa, we use the word sales, we don't use the word leasing and that's really confusing because we're not selling anything. We're, you know, with with selling rooms to rent, which is leasing, but we don't use the terminology leasing. So I've had to rewrite all the notes for this webinar that we're doing because it covers PBSA and VTR, and it's like we've got one half of the panelists that would say sales, training and sales processes and we've got half of the panelists that will be saying leasing, training and leasing processes. God, that's a whole minefield. Why is that? And actually, if PBSA started to use terminology like leasing, would it be less scary and people would think, oh, actually, you know, leasing rooms, that is part of my job. The minute you talk about sales, people think it's not part of their job.
Speaker 3:And the other aside to that is is, um, customer service. And a lot of people push back to us and say we, we do really, really great in in all of the surveys and all of the in our reviews because we've got great customer service and we're like we know the sector is brilliant at customer service. That doesn't mean they're good at leasing rooms. Um, and and I think you know, and the people who are filling out these surveys are your residents. The people that are doing the mystery shops, that inform our sales training, are people who haven't even bought. If you can't get them to lease a room, then they can't even fill out a survey to tell you how wonderful you are as landlords once you're in the room or in the flat.
Speaker 3:So yeah there's. You know there's a whole load of training that's needed around that. You know there's a whole load of training that's needed around that. And even marketing. There's so many people in marketing jobs who were probably really really bright stars in properties that have been promoted into kind of head office roles. You know which is. You know we love seeing people develop, but then they're probably not supported enough. You know. Take social media, for example. Somebody can love doing social media and love creating content. It doesn't mean that they're formally trained and understand the technology and the metrics and the reporting side of things and that's, you know, that's such an important part of that role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think the sector is probably very good at the compliance and the stuff that they have to teach, but I think all the other stuff goes to the wayside and I think that's even things of rolling out new technologies when they need to go and train staff on new technologies or new systems that they're using.
Speaker 2:We're just not very good at it and it's always a last thing to think about, which should be the first thing to think about is actually, we're gonna launch this new system. We need to make sure that everyone knows how to use it to get the best out of it, because otherwise what's the point of the investment? And I just think it's always the thing that's put at the back. And absolutely your point, sarah, is that marketing no sector's static and marketing isn't a static sector. There's new things coming in all the time and I know I've spoken about it in the past, but I sit on the apprenticeship travel laser group for marketing. We developed a new level two marketing, so entry-level marketing, apprenticeship kind of a year and a half, two years ago and we just reviewed that and actually it's probably not big enough. On ai, we did put it in, we did put it about keeping up with new technologies, but actually it probably needs its own section now. So that needs updating.
Speaker 2:And if you aren't, then sending your teams on marketing courses on what's changing in google, you Google the way Google's work has changed more than time because of AI, and I had the other week that actually where Google is likely to go is to it'll just be about AI. It won't be about all the other stuff. It won't be sweeping all the internet. It'll be using its AI tools to do the search. So actually the way that you do SEO will completely change. But if you're not and you don't and everyone and teams are so poorly resourced in many respects, they don't have the time really to go and do their own training. So if you're not encouraging that and you're not engaging that, then you're not going to have the best teams that know what's going on in this world. It's constantly changing.
Speaker 1:That thought we need to go for a break, but we will come back to that in just a second, and so let's now hear from our sponsor, Wash Station.
Speaker 3:Wash Station proudly sponsor this episode of Housed. We provide best in class laundry solutions that complement your buildings. Wash Station Smart, green, clean.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much to Wash Station for sponsoring this season of the podcast. We're really grateful to have you along, and congratulations to John, who has just been made managing director of Wash Station. Thanks very much for believing in housed and also for doing such a great job within the sector. Please do keep that thought leadership coming. We're really grateful for not just you sponsoring but also for the insights that you're bringing, the questions that you give us and, yeah, thanks very much for that. So, yeah, thanks to Wash Station.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to pick up on the leasing point in particular. I think we've got a whole section that we could do on training. I think we could probably do an episode on training which would hopefully help people to sort of set their standard for training within the industry, and I should just say there are some great training companies out there within PBSA and BTR, but I don't think that there is enough of a focus from operators on exactly what training is needed. I think HR all too often is busy dealing with issues or policies rather than actually creating training and development plans. I think all too often that's left to individuals to actually do that. That's my experience and I tried to change that Nido, with a few of these sort of sessions where you can upskill on a Friday morning, and we had big training budgets. We probably spent too much on training. There is a balance and actually some of that training probably wasn't quite relevant. It was more relevant to the person than it was to the company. So actually there's definitely a balance to be had there if the company's paying for it.
Speaker 1:But the leasing side of things I think we need to change the terminology completely.
Speaker 1:Now, when leasing first came in, it was because CA Ventures brought it across with Novel Student and they had their leasing and marketing specialists at each property. They had quite a lot of people at each property, but they really recognized that actually saying sales this is my sales coordinator that's not the best approach, and so I do think there's something to be said for changing that terminology in leasing rather than sales. I wanted to come on now to an article that we saw on Landlord Zone about the private rented sector and on build to rent. Now it was yeah, it was quite an interesting article. Sarah, I know you saw that. I don't know if you want to just summarize, because we've all read through it, but I don't know if you just want to summarize the article and what's going on in the in the prs sector at the moment well, I think we keep hearing that landlords are leading, leaving the sector and individual landlords in the PRS sector, and that's going to be really, really positive for PBSA, btr and co-living.
Speaker 3:So it always kind of spots our interest, doesn't it? When, out of the PRS, equivalent to 6% of the total ply and in 2023, for every one home bought by a landlord from an owner-occupier, 5.4% were sold to one, up from a one-to-one ratio in 2021. So, yes, but the other news is that there is consolidation going on. So, whilst some individual properties are being sold out of the the rental market, a lot are being bought by institutional investors, so they're still going to be available for rent. They're just being managed in a slightly different way.
Speaker 3:Now, the headline of this article was about BTR and the demand and how BTR can kind of fill this gap. Basically, savills were the ones that made the claim. They said that built-to-rent developments will eventually provide 30% of all homes within the private rented sector, and we did touch on this last week. Yeah, well, and that's kind of was my, my retort to that as well, based also on what we discussed, you know, last week a you've got to be able to build it, but it's got to be the right properties in the right place for the right people. We also talked last week about apartment living. You know, apartment living isn't necessarily for everybody. Now, when Savills are talking about BTR, are they considering single family housing within that as well?
Speaker 1:Let's hope so, because otherwise- I don't think they will be, if they haven't said it Well.
Speaker 3:I don't know. I mean, sometimes it is categorized as that, but you're right, they haven't specified it. And if that's the case, then you know btr apartments are going to take over the country, basically, um, and they're not necessarily where everybody wants to live and if the prices carry on going the way they are, people won't be able to afford to live in them anyway. Now, now, dan, I know that you always say the more houses there are, the prices will come down. So the levels of rent that BTR has at the moment can't be sustained, and the more there are, then the prices will have to come down. So maybe they will become more available to more people. But you know, I think the article also says, I think Landlord Zone also say, if BTR market matures to become home to 30% of the PRS, which is more in line with other international markets, at current rates of delivery, it will take 70 years. So I don't think that's quite what the government have in mind.
Speaker 2:But is this also an article that looks at data without looking at what's under that data, in the sense that these PRS homes aren't what we understand to be BTRs. Or they're just saying that something that is built for rent and is a home can replace it yes, but it's got to be btrs. Or they're just saying that something that is built for rent and it's a home can replace it yes, but it's got to be the right type of home. And or we're just going to force people into the kind of homes that they don't really want, because that's all there is, and actually the other prs hmo style homes that are available will get even higher rate because they're going to be even more in demand. So I don't know. It just feels that there's a lot of things underneath this article or underneath these numbers that, yeah, you can just say, if there's no prs, people are going to build to rent things that are built to rent, but they're not.
Speaker 1:We're not comparing apples and apples when we say that right and I think every what everyone's desperate to show is that there is attrition within the prs sector, and by that I mean, are the typical mom and pop landlords selling that four bed victorian terrace house, or whatever it might be, that might be used for students, it might be used for for general housing because of the renters reform bill now, I don't know within student. That's what we're all looking for. Everyone's desperate to see that nottingham and the nottingham city council apparently have the evidence to show that this is actually happening and it looks like it from these stats here. But student hmos will form a part of that. But there are sort of you know, yeah, 290,000 rental homes sold out of the private rented sector in England, you know, between April 21 and October 2024. Yeah, that's a ridiculous amount that not even you know that BTR can't keep up with. Single family housing certainly can't keep up with that. So you know what is happening to the rental sector as a whole. Is this because people are actually starting to buy more houses? We don't have any data to show that. But my worry with the PRS sector and the attrition within it is that, yeah, from what you've said, that Savills have said there, I don't think that people are looking for BTR if they've come out of the PRS sector all the time. I think BTR is relatively specific in terms of who it's targeting and that is effectively your graduates, therefore students, your postgraduate sorry. Therefore students, recent graduates, young professionals, young families. There are certain other you know BTR that are pitched according to people slightly later in life. Obviously, you can then go on to later living, but this isn't apples for apples.
Speaker 1:You can't just say that someone's selling. You know that people who were living in a four bedbed rented house in headingly are then going to move directly into the center of leeds into a btr property and that it's just going to be moving. You know pieces of the puzzle around. That's just not the way it works. Everyone's focused on exactly what they want, not the fact that. You know. I don't think that we're the majority of the market aren't just grateful to have a place to live. They want a place where they can thrive. And so I think that we're the majority of the market aren't just grateful to have a place to live. They want a place where they can thrive. And so I think that, yeah, we just need to be a bit cautious in the way we're looking at this. I don't want it to feel like it's agents trying to sell the concept of BTR as a whole and just build it and they will come. Like we've seen that. That is not always going to happen in PBSA or BTR as a whole.
Speaker 3:If you look at this article in partnership with the latest Zoopla report, it's also really interesting because it says the four-year surge in UK rental prices has ended. Over the 12 months to April 2025, average rents for new tenancies rose by 2.8%, which is less than half the 6.4% growth rate seen a year earlier and the slowest pace since July 2021. So if you are an investor and the agents are persuading you that VTR is the way forward, if you then look at this data, as we always say, there's still profit to be made, there's still a massive return available here, but it might not be looking as rosy as it has done in previous years, which is then going to put investors and developers off. Potentially. If they were, you know, initially thinking you know that they would be getting, you know, a much higher rental income. That doesn't look like the case and, like you always say, dan, the more people build, the less. That is so that 2.8% of rental increase might become lower and lower and lower and lower, which is going to disincentivize investors as well.
Speaker 1:I agree, but then maybe it becomes a bit more institutional investment, who knows? Anyway, let's let's move on to our final break of the session and let's hear from Utopi.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Utopi, the smart building platform that helps real estate owners protect the value of their assets.
Speaker 3:From ESG compliance to energy efficiency and resident engagement. Utopia turns real time data into action, making buildings better for people, planet and profit. If you're in asset management or operations and care about performance, utopia is your essential partner. Find out more at utopiacouk. That's U-T-O-P-Icouk.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much to Jonathan and Ben and the team at Utopi. We're very grateful for having them on board, and do check out the recent episode that we had with Jonathan Burridge, founder of Utopi Really great insight, not just into Utopi and their impact positive impact on PBSA and BTR but on what it's like to actually run, grow, scale a business that's really trying to do some good in the sector. So, yeah, do reach out to Utopia for all of your energy management needs. Okay, and Sarah, I know you wanted to have a quick chat about the UK government's Older People's Housing Taskforce, which we know is very much needed. But, yeah, they've recently published their long awaited report, which is called Our Future Homes Housing that Promotes Wellbeing and Community for an Ageing Population. So that highlighted obviously the need for improved housing solutions for the elderly, and we've already known this for a while, since our conversation with Donna Barra and the work that we obviously do as consultants within the later living sector as well. What did you take from that?
Speaker 3:Well, I just wanted to kind of mention that it's fantastic that there is a task force out there. We've been mentioning it for the last year on house, you know, and most recently we were discussing what it would take for old people to free up their family homes, you know, so that there's more availability on the market. The statistic that struck me was the task force estimates that the UK needs to build around 30 to 50,000 new later living homes per year in order to meet the needs of our ageing population, and we're currently only building around 7,000 per year. So the numbers are shocking and you know, know, the numbers hide a multitude of sins, as we know.
Speaker 3:You know, what are these 30 to 50 000 new later living homes going to look like? Are they all going to be in high-rise apartments? Are they going to have gardens, as we touched on last week in the podcast? Are they going to be in the right locations? But what is it going to take for, you know, for people to actually move out of their family homes? And also it doesn't say whether these it going to take for people to actually move out of their family homes, and also it doesn't say whether these are going to be rental homes or homes to buy as well and, as we know, there needs to be a huge mix on the market.
Speaker 3:If people are going to be, there's going to be less home ownership, then that will carry on through into later life, later life. But basically the things that have been identified in this task force is independence and safety, community engagement, health benefits, economic impact and the workforce and support, so you know the people who can support people that actually maybe do want to stay in their homes as well. So I guess that's it's not necessarily saying we need to build all of them, but we need to make sure that people can be supported wherever they want to live in their older age, and I think point to all those points other than, arguably, maybe the last one about workforce support is that all of that counts for any housing we build or any community we build.
Speaker 2:So again is it is the government trying to look at things in the wrong way, instead of just saying actually, this is a housing need for the entirety of the community and this is what we're going to need, because having a community that's got independence and safety, community engagement, health benefits and economic impact and has the ability to support people who are more vulnerable or need to do that, is a great thing to have for whatever age you are in life, and actually it might help to build the right things in the right places without this problem. We've got at the moment where we've got the wrong things in the wrong places and we're probably trying to answer too many questions when we just need to build good homes for a good community.
Speaker 1:Surely in later living. There is a massive opportunity here for the later living operators the Birchgroves et cetera to be offering a part exchange scheme that they could then fold into a single family housing department. So effectively you are buying properties from somebody who needs later living. You're releasing that equity. But not just that. You're then buying the property completely off them to then put back into the single family housing market. That surely closes that loop and brings more housing to rent for families and frees up those extra bedrooms and gives people what they want. There's definitely something in that. I'd love to see someone really attack that. Maybe they have. Let us know.
Speaker 1:Do get in touch with us if you know that there is a company out there that has created that sort of circular ecosystem to kind of close that loop. But on that note, thank you very much to my student halls for being our headline sponsor for the season. I'm very grateful for your support. Of course, thanks very much to utopia and Station. Do get in touch with them for all of your energy management and laundry needs, and we're very grateful for all of you listening as well. If you work in PBSA, vtr, co-living, later living, hmo, single family housing and university accommodation. Do please get in touch with us If you could give us a rating. Review it on your podcast channel of choice and don't forget to have a listen next time. Oh, and don't forget to send us your questions and your themes and topics for our next episode. We're very much looking forward to answering them.
Speaker 1:So thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time.