How Renting Can Innovate Faster Than Sales, Is there really a Student Quota in BTR? Why do we still need Women only Awards? With guest host Brendan Geraghty.

In the latest of episode of Housed, Sarah Canning, guest host Brendan Geraghty and Deenie Lee discuss:
- Key takeaways from the Bisnow Student Accommodation Summit
- Underwriting gaps, slow valuations, and student share assumptions
- Rental as a housing laboratory: PBSA, co-living, later living, SFR
- Design, density, and standards for families and students
- Partnerships with universities and evolving nomination practices
- Policy pressures: Renters’ Rights Bill, PRS contraction, affordability
- Moving beyond amenity marketing to trust, predictability, and fairness
- Diversity, representation, and challenging ownership bias

PLUS find out more about Housed: The Shared Living Summit happening at UKREiiF 2026!  

Stay up to date on Housed podcast via its LinkedIn page.

Rental Living sector thought leader and CEO of The Association for Rental Living, Brendan Geraghty joins us as guest host for this episode.

Dan Smith is Founder of RESI Consultancy and Co-Founder of Verbaflo.AI Good Management.

Sarah Canning and Deenie Lee are Directors and Co-Founders of The Property Marketing Strategists - Elevating Marketing in Property.

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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Sponsors, And Setup
• 1:27 Takeaways From Bisnow Summit
• 2:30 Why Students Choose Built To Rent
• 5:10 Limits, Quotas, And Community Mix
• 7:25 Comparing PBSA And BTR Product
• 9:30 Underwriting, Students In The Model
• 12:00 Rental As Housing Innovation Lab
• 15:05 Segregation Vs Mixed Living
• 18:35 Nominations, Partnerships, Predictability
• 21:10 Renters’ Rights Bill: Risks And Shifts
• 25:05 Supply, Affordability, And Policy Gaps
• 27:12 Sponsor Break: Utopi
• 28:25 Gendered Awards And Real Diversity
• 33:08 Learning From Other Sectors
• 34:46 Sponsor Break: Washstation
• 35:20 Pro‑Buying Policies And Rental Blindspots
• 38:40 Messaging BTR: Beyond Amenities
• 41:00 Codes, Trust, And The BTR Alliance
• 44:05 UKREiiF Announcement: Shared Living Summit
• 47:25 Closing Thanks And Get In Touch

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to How's the Shared Living Podcast. We're delighted to be back once more with all the news, views, and insights from the shared living sectors. And this week we've got a very special guest host, Brendan. Would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

Hello, my name is Brendan Gerrity. I'm the Chief Exec of the Association for Rental Living. We develop, promote, and generally advocate for all things built to rent and we set the standards for the sick.

SPEAKER_05: 0:25

That's great, and thank you, Brendan, for being here. It's really great to have you. You're still stuck with me, Deanny Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists, and Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists. And we do have apologies from Dan today, but he is away of joining time with his newborn baby. We're exactly where he should be. But you're in very good hands with the three of us today. Before we go on with the episode, we just have a quick word from our headline sponsor.

SPEAKER_03: 0:50

Season five of Housed, sponsored by MyStudentTools.com. List your properties commission free and reach thousands of students searching for their university home.

SPEAKER_05: 1:01

Dan and the team from MyStudent Halls have been supporters of ours since the beginning, and we are incredibly grateful that they're here once again as headline sponsors of season five. We know anyone working in student accommodation is busy budget setting at the moment, so make sure you get in contact with Dan and the team to make sure you have My Student Halls in your budget for the 26-27 leasing season. And of course, a huge thank you to Wash Station and Utopia for coming back and sponsoring House once again. We will hear more from them later. So last week, Sarah and I were out and about in London and we went to the Bisnow Student Accommodation Summit. Sarah, do you want to tell us a little bit more about what we learned there?

SPEAKER_04: 1:37

Yeah. Thank you, BisNow, for inviting us to attend. It was very, very well attended. It was an afternoon event, which is great. Just, you know, a couple of short, sharp hours in the afternoon and with plenty of networking opportunities. And actually, we thought that the panellists were very open and honest about the challenges of the sector, which was very refreshing. Lacking a little bit in solutions, but I'm sure we all come on to that. But certainly there was an awareness and honesty about what the problems are. One of them was talking about the data needing on commuting students, and it feels like in the PBSA sector, everybody felt is feeling a lack of occupancy, and that could be down to commuting students. Obviously, as we discussed last week, there are lots of reasons why people don't live in PBSA. But while we've got Brendan here, we thought, why don't we pick his brains being the BTR expert that he is? So, Brenda, what why do you think students might like living in BTR?

SPEAKER_00: 2:34

Well, to some extent, I think uh Bill to Rent is a bit of an evolution of PBSA, and certainly the uh the rooms are bigger, so there are some advantages. But in all honesty, I think that built to rent has been picking up students really from the get-go, with about, on average, about 20% of the occupants of buildings are students. I mean, some are as high as 30%. So we see them as a very welcome cohort within the building. If we're honest with ourselves, they're a little bit of a safety net to full occupation uh for our sector. And how long that will last is uh perhaps a question that we should give some thought to uh sometime very soon. But in in reality, I think it's about consistency and predictability and quality of accommodation. That's not to say that those don't exist in PBSA land, but in built-to-rent land, it obviously is at a slightly different market position with slightly different levels of support and amenity and all that kind of thing. So it does tend to it does tend to attract the wealthier student, I suppose, but it does also attract a number of sharers, and I'm aware of a number of shared apartments in built to rent that are occupied by groups of students. So it's there, it's part of the solution, and we welcome students in like we will anybody else.

SPEAKER_05: 3:48

Is it welcomed in by accident or is there a targeted approach to getting those students? And one of the things that we hear a lot is about that there's certain quotas, and BTR won't go over those quotas. What would you say is the reality of that?

SPEAKER_00: 4:01

There is a little bit of that going on. So there is a concern that the student student culture and long-term lets, you know, people who are in there for a longer term at least don't mix or shouldn't. It may not mix well. I find that slightly odd, but some people will take that view. Equally, you know, if we look at short-term lets, there are those who who who think that that would contaminate the culture of community that is trying to be created and built to rent land. But if we walk down the average street, I'm sure there won't we won't walk very far before we find one house who's got some Airbnb and another house that's a shared, a shared dwelling of any description, as well as those who are permanent residents, and they all seem to get along famously, or or or at least in theory, they do. So do people set limits on it? I think they do. I think that that's a that's a little bit of a suck it and see approach. Those who have had students in there for longer times, and very often they're more mature students, they're the master's guys and and above, report no problems at all. You know, but I'm the maybe the odd one, I'm sure, but but generally speaking, they don't report problems, but they do seek to limit it on the grounds of a sort of a community issue. But those are individual business decisions. As a as an organization, as the ARL, we promote diversity of all sorts, and we provide and particularly cultural diversity. We need to we need to accommodate the entire world in our buildings, and that's certainly what I hope we will do.

SPEAKER_04: 5:34

So what we have our own ideas on this, but I'd be really interested to get your thoughts, Brendan. What do you think it is about the product? Because I think what we feel like is students aren't going to BTR because there's nowhere else available for them. There's plenty of beds available, and actually there's voids in PBSA. So there's something about BTR in some instances in some cities that is appealing about the product that is not appealing about the product of PBSA. You know, what are your, you know, your members, your network, what are they saying about it?

SPEAKER_00: 6:06

Look, we've got to compare apples with apples, and I don't think it's it's fair to for me to say, oh well, PBSA does this and we do that, and then and that's why we're better. I think it's a very different product. You know, there are differences, of course, there's differences in the size of units, there's differences in the amenities which are available, and there's differences in, I think, just the nature of occupation being slightly different, and also a much greater diversity of people. So when you're in student halls or you're in PBSA land, you're with students, whether you like it or not. Whereas in Built to Rent, we have a much, much more varied demographic and of age groups, cultures, and so on and so forth. So I think it's very much really a question of horses for courses and affordability on top of that. And I suppose built to rent is a little bit more like a permanent home rather than PBSA, which is long-term but temporary accommodation. I mean, it's for the for the um academic years. I know that can be extended, but in principle, it's not a permanent home, it is a uh temporary home. Whereas built-to-rent could be permanent if it if you wanted it to be, and it has the characteristics of a permanent place to live. And that permanency, that high, that homeliness, if you for want of a better word, is important. And I think community is important to be able to find a community that that that reflects your own values. And when you're a student, not always are those values all accommodated, uh, and that's largely, I think, to do the demographic. But in Built to Red, I think we have we we have a more diverse community uh naturally, and so therefore there's a little bit more to choose from.

SPEAKER_04: 7:42

Thanks, Brendan. That was perfectly put, and I think gives a lot of food for thought about the design of these spaces and the management and the flexibility. Just shifting to another topic that was discussed at the Biz now conference. They were talking about challenging the underwrite. You know, there's a big gap that goes between doing you know the investment appraisal and the completion of the building. Several years are passed in that process, and what's in the underwrite isn't necessarily reality. Would student numbers typically be factored into BTR, you know, in that you know, safe 20% really in some of those major university cities?

SPEAKER_00: 8:20

I think they are now. I don't think they always were. You know, I think our valuers are lovely people, but they move slowly and they eventually get there, which is important, but you know, they don't recognize short stay either, which I think is city. You know, this diversity of people within the building and the diversity of tenure within the building is part of the diversity of life, and it's part of the diversity of everything, and and every community has a range of people who stay for different times and all the rest of the kind of thing. So I think you know, we can take curatorship a bit too far. We can control diversity to some extent, and what I mean by that is not controlling as in to to to to eliminate certain people, but to to to have it proportional within the mix that we're trying to do, and that may be business uh models which which which require that. But I think what's important is that we don't come at this from a position of exclusion and and and to find ways to accommodate all needs. Now, I'm gonna move this into a slightly bigger point, which is a point about what does rental really do? And what rental really does is spots a gap and fills it in a way that the sales market is incapable of doing. So, my current view on this is that the rental world is the incubator, the creative laboratory of housing. All the innovation in housing comes from rental. Landlords or or or whoever spot a need in the market and they respond to that need, whether it be student halls, co-living, built-to-rent, later living, single family, it doesn't really matter. There's a need in the market, and we respond to it. Whereas the sales world have given the same old product without much evolution for quite a long time now. I think they may need to go and sort of evolve their product a little bit. So the rental market is not understood in terms of the value that it brings to society as a broad laboratory of experimentation and innovation. And that's really, really important in the world that we're going into. But part of that is the accommodation of people of all sorts, but also living models of all sorts. So if affordability is the issue, that's why co-living was invented. But do we get support for co-living? Hmm. We'll discuss that another time. Built to rent. Why was built to rent invented? Well, it came in because we needed an alternative to some of the some of the poor quality landlords of the PRS. Is it fully understood and supported? Hmm, another discussion for another time. We don't value the rental sector. That's plain and simple. We do not value it. We need to start valuing it. We need to see that it provides a range of home types to a very vast range of people. And the sales market provides a range of houses to one type of person, those who can afford a mortgage.

SPEAKER_05: 11:21

No, and I think that is really, really true. And I think we'll come on later in the episode a bit about kind of the political rhetoric around selling and renting. But I just wanted to go back a bit to because I absolutely agree, I think there is innovation in the rental market. But I guess one of my bugbears and something that we talk a lot on previous episodes is this segregation that we have in the rental market, and that you know, there is a concern in PBSA around challenge cities and places, but yet we've got a housing crisis, but we can't build more PBSA because those students are living in lots of different places, there isn't PBSA, but yeah, we're not building. So is that segregation just part of that innovation? And do you think we'll see a change where, like you say, about BTR is a mix of people living together that can live there? And is that more of what we should be doing generally as opposed to providing different segregation for different people?

SPEAKER_00: 12:19

Look, I I think specific solutions for specific body bodies of people or groups of people is always a good idea because there's a a sort of a commonality uh amongst them, and certainly you know, for those who make the first transition from from home to university or college, wherever they're going, and you know, you want to live amongst your peers with some level of of care included so that the parents don't fret too much. So there's always a need for specific or bespoke accommodation. Uh, and I and I think there always will be, and that's quite a big scale of of need. However, you know, nothing's a panacea for every you know, for everything. And so, therefore, as our needs change, as our confidence grows as individuals, why did why do the majority of students move out of halls after first year, partly because they have to, partly because they want to? And they they they they they've had a year of growth and they they want to go out into the big, to the to a larger world with with a different type of independence. So if the question is about student, I think that students will always gravitate to that which suits them best. And if it's the wallet, they'll make those choices, and if it's the facilities, they'll make those choices very often. It'll be about proximity. But we're now hearing stories of of students commuting huge distances uh in order to get into university uh living very far away from university campuses because it's all they can afford. So there is a question of the price point for all houses, including PBSA. But if we look at the broader the broader issue of the diversity of homes that we have in in this country, and should, you know, well, if we if we believe that we should only build houses and and and homes that are for the nuclear family, well then we're going to exclude rather a lot of people. But that's what most planning policy supports. The nuclear family is important, but it isn't everything.

SPEAKER_04: 14:28

So, and that's you know, so I think that's the same, same here, probably the same, same everywhere. People think that families only want to live in houses, but it's it's not about the fact that you know you're on the seventh floor or you don't have a garden, it's actually the layout of the of the space that's been designed.

SPEAKER_00: 14:44

Yeah, if you look at countries that do have successful flat living apartment living, they are designed for families. They are larger, there's there's space for them to breathe, if you like, and they go down and and and and commute on the ground floor. And we've been a little bit bad at that in Britain. Our space standards are not the best in the world, they're applied too bluntly. It's a measure of quality when there can be very many other measures of quality rather than just the size of your your your studio or your or your flat. But no, we need to, we need we will have to, if we're going to accommodate all the people in this in this country and and also deal with it through density and and not have our cities expand extra you know kind of exponentially, we will have to we will have to go vertical and we will have to develop a culture of living in higher density buildings, you know, and they don't all have to be you know very, very tall, but you know, we will have to develop that culture because we won't really have much of a choice.

SPEAKER_05: 15:44

No, I'll just say I think there's still room for innovation and the rental market is is there to deliver that. Just want to go back to a couple of things that were discussed at the BizNow conference before we finish this segment. One of them, which I just wanted to discuss because it kind of was a bit of frustration of mine when we were talking about that actually the PBSA sector needs to go back to nomination deals with universities, of actually asking them to kind of work in partnership with them, which during those COVID years when rents were high. I know that there's many PBSA operators that turned away university nominations agreements when universities were reaching out to guarantee accommodation for their students because they got a higher rent. And that to me is is a real struggle when you kind of almost bite the hand that feeds you, and then you want to go back and go, actually, we want to work with you. So just yeah, interested, I guess, Sarah, on your your views on that, and Brendan interested to see whether you kind of see a world where if BTR is looking at 20% of students, whether that's a a a way that they're to go around kind of these nomination agreements and partnerships with universities.

SPEAKER_04: 16:44

It was interesting actually at the Urban Living Conference, they exactly said suggested this. They were looking at kind of the city plans and they noted the how many BTR buildings there were and that universities should be paying attention to that. If they want to know where their students are living and keep an eye on where they are and have good partnerships with the landlords, then they shouldn't be discounting BTR. So yeah, back back to you, Brendan. Can you see are you seeing that happening, sensing it?

SPEAKER_00: 17:11

We're seeing it a little bit. Investors are there to make money. Sometimes they do it sensibly and sometimes they don't. It sounds to me like if they bit in the hand that feed them, that perhaps they had a they but they may have had a senior moment. I don't know. I'm not in BBSA land and I can't comment on those dynamics. But it would seem foolhardy to not engage with the effectively your exit strategy or your or your source of your source of residence and and look for partnerships in that regard. One of the things that we've seen come in cycles is you know this idea that it's all about the bottom line, and then then we go into partnership mode, and then we come out of partnership mode, and we have some other partnership version which has a different name. But it's all about it, it seems that we when we when we are collaborating, we are at our best. And when we don't collaborate, we are not at our best. And that's the same for the quality of the experience as much as the quality of you know the overall business, the business model. Because it's we live in a symbiotic system, we we we are not alone in our ecosystems, we have to engage and relate to to other forces of supply and demand, etc. etc. So everybody makes mistakes, I guess. I I don't know. What I do know is that the innovation, you know, we we we we we if we look at what investors are really looking for, they're looking for predictability. And they're looking, you know, my phrase to describe this to everybody in built-to-rent land is boring is beautiful. The more when we get to a point where the asset, whether it be a built-to-rent asset or a PBSA asset or a co-living asset, is just doing its job and it's fully let and it's collecting rents and the and and it's collect you know getting a little bit of income from some of the other things that may be going on and so on, and it's predictable as an asset, predictable as an investment, that's when um that's when the real when the investors really, really love it. But we also know that if you stand still, you you start to rot. So you can't stand still for too long, and an innovation might have to happen. And perhaps what you described earlier, Deanny, was was was an innovation that perhaps didn't work. They thought that might have been I I don't know, but as long as we're not standing still, we'll probably be okay. But when we stand still, I think um that's when you've got to worry.

SPEAKER_05: 19:27

Yeah, I absolutely agree, and I think it is where a lot of you know the PBSA sector potentially is that it's been great for so long, that structures work for so long. Um, who's gonna be the first to move and change that? And no one no one wants it to be them. So we'll we'll see what happens. I guess the the the last thing I just want to discuss from the Business conference was about the renters' rights bill, which which was mentioned. I think I my kind of view around the renters' rights bill is from a from BPSA perspective. I don't think they're taking seriously enough about the benefit it brings to BTR actually, and it really isn't a leveller in many respects between PBSA and BTR. And I I worry that the PBSA sector hasn't really taken that mantle on and realised that actually it's gonna have potentially a negative impact on them in a world of thinking, oh, we just carry on as normal because we're exempt. What's your kind of take from the BTR sector around the rentist rights bill?

SPEAKER_00: 20:21

We're a bit grumpy about it if we're honest with ourselves. I think that it's gone a little bit too far, you know what I mean? I I i I don't want to be political on this, but I think the version that the Conservatives worked up, I think the embassy the the our sector accepted that it it had sufficient checks and balances, but the additional sort of rights or leaning to additional rights that go towards the resident or the tenant rather than the than the landlord, we we think creates an imbalance that will bite us on the bum, quite frankly. So we're all waiting to see what the final we all kind of think we know what the final thing is going to be. But you know, there's this there's a balance to be struck between attracting investment to create the homes that we need, we we desperately need, and spooking investors. And when you can't have more than a guaranteed two-month lease in effect, it's like, well, hang on a second, you know, what's going to happen here? Now, the good news is that people don't like moving, so they'll tend not to, in my book, right? So you're not gonna but and you will get some like you get some everywhere who will challenge the any rent increase and take them to the uh adjudication, and it will be a mess and difficult, and everybody will be grumpy who's involved in those things. Hopefully, those will be a very small proportion of it. And don't forget, in Scotland, we've had some form of rent rise control, if you like, and and nobody sort of nobody died. We we the everybody managed to get on with that. But there's a number of things in the renters' rights bill that I think will be are unintended consequences. Firstly, the exit from the from the broader PRS economy, not so much the built-to-rent economy, but the broader PRS, we're seeing significant numbers of mom and pop uh landlords who own one or half a dozen uh properties leaving because it's it's too much. You know, they they can't they can't make it work and the the legal legal obligations on them are too onerous. So we're gonna see a net res a net decline in in homes, available homes from the from the PRS rather than an increase in homes. And whilst it's designed to improve standards and bring some professionalism and all of that kind of thing, which we 100% support, 100% support that, it's also gonna result in the exiting of those who can't who don't want to do that or find that too burdensome. So there will be there will be some some negative after effects of it, and I think that we we need to wait and see. But on the other hand, it probab some reform of the of the AST and the and the balance of rights between the landlord and a tenant was, I think, in my view, long overdue. And and that's a good thing. You know, students in Built a Red Land, well, they don't have to sign any one-year lease anymore, they can just stay for the term. But will they? You know, will will they even be bothered to do that? But I can see that I predict there will be a move to a different demographic over time where that we'll we'll start to target the later living because you really don't have to change the building, you just have to change the marketing, and there'll be a very secure and very conservative tenancy or demographic in in any building because they you know they'll they'll they'll know they will want to make sure they pay their bills and I guess behave themselves in that sense. So I think we'll see further diversification of built-to-rent occupancy as a consequence of the renters' rights bill, and we'll see some real clogging in in the courts.

SPEAKER_04: 23:47

I I think one of the challenges, you know, I agree with everything you're saying, and the benefits for the tenant is you know, is unquestionable, but all of the regulations that can be putting HMO landlords off is going to reduce supply, definitely, not only through the renters' rights bill, but through EPC, through fire regulations, through all of this, and lack of supply just means that the prices go up. So that affordability factor is something that neither PBSA at the moment nor BTR has really been able to address. And it could take that kind of lower rung, that entry-level you know rental model out. And I'm sure that's something that we could discuss all day long. It's not for today, but it is it is uh probably you know unpredicted.

SPEAKER_00: 24:33

But but the market you know, landlords set mark set rents according to what the market will bear. And this is a point that I don't think is fully understood by by many. You know, you have exploitative landlords who kick people out in order to put the rent up. So we know there's some bad ones out there. But generally speaking, in a supply and demand market, it's the market that sets the rates. It's the same for cars, it's the same for everything. And the truth of the matter is until we build significantly more homes of all kinds, we are not gonna even scratch the surface of this. And this is a you know, this can be traced back to my lifetime, certainly, where we, you know, we stopped building council housing. Uh, it may not have been the most beautiful housing in the world, but it kept pace with demand. But you know, since then we have seen a radical and severe decline, and now we're trying to play catch up, and it's just bloody difficult.

SPEAKER_05: 25:23

We're gonna take a quick break now. Thank you once again to Biz now for inviting us along to the student accommodation summit. And we're just here from one of our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Utopia, the smart building platform that helps real estate owners protect the value of their assets.

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

From ESG compliance to energy efficiency and resident engagement, Utopia turns real-time data into action, making buildings better for people, planet, and profit.

SPEAKER_04: 25:48

If you're in asset management or operations and care about performance, utopia is your essential partner. Find out more at utopia.co.uk. That's utopi.co.uk.

SPEAKER_05: 26:02

Utopia are multi-award winning and make data acquisition, analysis and action simple for real estate investors, asset managers and operators. Do get in touch with the team there if you're looking at performance reporting, temperature control, and empowering residents. We were also in London last week for The Inspiring Women in Property, and it would be remiss of me not to mention that our very own Sarah Canning was up for PBSA Women of the Year. Sadly, she didn't win, but she's a winner in our eyes, and I think everything that she does for the sector stands for itself. But we do also applaud the Jackie Hudson from now one this year, and it Jackie's been in the sector for a very long time, so big congratulations to her. And it was great to see HR on that, winning that award because we don't often talk about HR, and at the end of the day, people are vitally important to what PBSA operators deliver for their customers. I think Sarah that you put this topic on the episode agenda because you wanted me to talk about why I get slightly frustrated every year at having an Inspiring Women in Property Awards where we're sitting on our own. The women get to sit on their own and be awarded for their accolades, but the the real ones are done in other memes and other places. So we have the real awards and then we have the women's awards. Am I right, Sarah?

SPEAKER_04: 27:16

Well, yeah, you to be honest, you um chewed my ear off about it all night, so I thought I thought, why not why not tell the rest of our audience why you don't like gender-specific awards? So you you have the spotlight now. Go for it.

SPEAKER_05: 27:31

I do, and I guess I you know I absolutely want to celebrate women. I recognise that we probably don't have a world that we should have where there is true equality, but I do want a world where actually women can just be celebrated as part of an equal workforce in real estate, and actually we don't need a separate awards ceremony by ourselves. We're still a long way from that, I know that, and that's why we need this, but it's not rocket science, I guess, in how we need to get there and what we need to do, and the pace is glacial as per usual, and I guess I just get frustrated every year that it is still so glacial, and that's my view, Brendan?

SPEAKER_00: 28:10

I think um, you know, as I think there's just too many men in property, period. And I think there's too many men on building sites, period. So I agree with you in principle, and why don't we you know why does it have to be gender specific? I don't know. Things are changing, they're not changing quickly enough, but at least they are moving in the right direction. And what we really need, rather than anything else, is a diversity of minds. And I think that the you know the female brain is is wired differently to the male brain, and then our individual brains are wired differently to each other, and you need that incredible matrix of possibility to really get the best results. My favorite story about this is the 9-11 attacks and the FBI or the CAA, whoever is the intelligence crowd in the US. And one of the reasons they didn't pick up on that threat and they and be able to foil it was because they realized that they recruited almost exclusively from the same cohort of people, which is white, middle-aged, middle-class males who went to the same univers or went to half a dozen universities in the States, they all came out with similar degrees, and guess what? They all thought very similarly. What they recognized, and you've got to give them credit for admitting it, they thought if they'd had some cross-cultural diversity, some gender diversity, and some just drop a couple of crazies in there, they would have had different types of thinking, and the chances of them intercepting that terrible event would have been much, much greater. So the diversity, the value of diversity is not understood, neither at a gender level nor at a kind of intellectual level. But the best results come from maximizing. All the the thought potential that exists out there, the trick is to it is to draw it together and integrate it and produce something which is which is practical and usable and scalable and all that stuff. But we do ourselves a massive disservice if we do not take the opportunity to draw on different things. So I completely agree with you. The day that we don't have gender-specific awards will be a great day. I will say in BuiltTorrent Land, and indeed at our conference, which is coming up on the 6th of November, quick plug there, we will have more women and diversity represented than any other ones that I've ever been to. And I think BillTerrent more generally is doing an okay job in promoting women within the industry. And I know within the ARL itself, and I have various committees and working groups and everything else, and not to be critical of any of them, but I know the ones that are either dominated or run by women are generally very successful compared to others.

SPEAKER_04: 30:57

I mean, I've I've worked in property my entire adult career. I've I've seen a lot of change in gender diversity and for the better. We're still not there yet, I totally agree, but you know, I think optically it is changing. Probably depending on the event you go to, there are some that are better representative, some that aren't. I still think that the areas that the sector needs to work much harder on is age diversity and people of colour. I still think that that is really, really lagging behind that people and and it's it's diversity of thought, isn't it? What you just said, Brendan, that you know, if you don't have any diversity around a board table or from a design perspective or from a policy perspective or an operations perspective, then how can you represent the people that are going to be living in your buildings that you're going to be marketing to? And you know, whilst I fully appreciate we can't have you know lots and lots of different events and different categories and you know start you know marginalising and marginalising and marginalising to give other demographics a voice. But we need to find another way of doing it then, because I I don't want to be an inspiring woman in PBSA, I want to be an inspiring person in PBSA, you know, and I don't want there to be the you know, the under 30s award or you know, the you know, the black people in cut in property events, you know, and everyone is doing their bit, but it should just be as as one. So yeah, I think gender is just one side of the story, isn't it? It's there's you know there's still a huge amount to do across the sector from a from a diversity point of view.

SPEAKER_00: 32:37

I mean, there are examples, maybe not always in property, but there are examples where proper equality does exist. So if you take the World Surf League, which is the professional surfing circuit around the world, they make you can't put a competition on unless the prize money's the same for men and women, they both get paid. This, I mean, they have to negotiate their own sponsorships. But in in as far as that body can can regulate um equality, they do it absolutely, and not just uh through the gender, but within the diversity of drawing people in. So there are examples around the world of really, really doing it well and doing it properly. But sadly, our our our property chums, they're trying their best, but they may need to try harder on their school reports.

SPEAKER_05: 33:18

Yeah, still still work to do.

SPEAKER_04: 33:20

Well, maybe using Brendan's surf example, we need to look outside of the sector, and that's probably the same in you know, in most most things that you know you can't just stay within your lane. You can learn things from other areas as well.

SPEAKER_00: 33:32

Oh, that's that diversity word again, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04: 33:35

Yeah, yeah, that's that's the theme for the episode, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_05: 33:40

Absolutely. Uh we'll just say a quick break to hear from another one of our sponsors.

SPEAKER_02: 33:45

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SPEAKER_05: 33:57

Washstation is the pioneer of fully digital, highly sustainable, and more enjoyable communal laundry rooms. Do get in touch with the team to elevate your laundry experience. And the final topic I wanted to talk about briefly today was just that we did touch on last week's episode, but um both party conferences from the Conservatives and Labour talked a lot about policy and incentives for the buying process. Labour were talking about trying to make the process easier so that actually you agree upfront the contract so that actually it goes smoothly through. And the Conservatives are talking about removing stamp duty. But is this at the detriment of the rental market? And should the sector be worried? And what more is being done, I guess, to raise the profile around the rental sectors of BTR, co-living, PBSA, around that isn't always just buying is the way that you can get a home.

SPEAKER_00: 34:49

Yeah, I mean, I think the government, success of governments, again, going back to my point on not valuing the rental sector as an enabler to home ownership, as a as a facilitator of owner of home ownership and all of that kind of thing. When is the government going to come up with a policy which helps renters rather than only helping um homeowners? The rental world is not anti-home ownership. I don't know where that fallacy comes from. We are not at all. We recognize what we do is acting as a facilitator or a stop cap until you go and buy your own place or whatever the case may be. Indeed, there's strong evidence that if you have a development and you have rental in the in rental properties, a good proportion of them within the and particularly built to rent, that it actually speeds up the sales of houses and it shortens the construction process, which is good for good for the for the bank balance and and and helps to deliver more and more homes and gets communities established. So the the government is myopic in its in its approach. So I mean removing stamp duty is a silver bullet approach, but the only people who really benefit from that are the people who have big properties to sell. Much better would be a discount on on budget, not budgets, on um deposits or some other form to enable home ownership. You know, the right to buy things didn't it appeared on the surface to do uh a good job and and and many benefited from it, but it didn't really increase the volume of housing. Not really. So, you know, it's about I I think we need to stop tinkering and looking at silver bullet headlines and say what is really going to work here. You know, making it easier to sell to sell or buy a house, of course that's a good thing. Of course it is. Because it's the most arcane system I've ever encountered, the the one that we use in in here in the UK. I I just makes no sense to me at all. So we can if we can bring greater efficiency to those things, and we'll all save some money and save some time, and that's great. But how are we actually enabling people to buy their properties? And more to the point, how are we enabling the rental sector to provide that stop gap? We're not. I mean, there was a the there was a press release on a new on a government planning bill coming through and they released some of the details. It's tinkering at the edges. We need to bite the bullet. You know, in my view, we should have a presumption in favor of development if it's housing. You still got to go through your DDs and the planning stuff, you've got to make sure that you know you you meet somebody, but if there's a balance of compliance and it's housing, there should be a presumption in favor. Because we have to we we have to deliver such a volume that unless we make some radical shifts in our thinking and in our um approach, we are never gonna get there. And I mean, I I did some some some research, like, you know, baby boomers, and I'm not one of them, 80% of them are homeowners. Gen X, I'm a Gen Xer, 70%. Go down to millennials, only 50% of them will ever own a home. 50% of millennials. Then we go to to Gen Z prediction, 29% will only will ever own a home. Uh Gen Alpha, there's no stats on that, but it just says it's a very high, high likelihood of never owning a home. And Gen Beta, when they come along, even worse so. So if they're not gonna own a home, where are they gonna live?

SPEAKER_04: 38:21

But also, why is that seen as a negative? That's the rhetoric that I really don't like. That, oh, poor, you know, poor Gen Alpha, you're never gonna own a home. Like, I just I just want to flip the whole narrative about the positivity of renting and that renting shouldn't be a plan B. You shouldn't, it shouldn't be, oh, I feel so sorry for you because you're never gonna buy it buy a home. I just I don't know, I don't like it. I I I'm I have children, they are either Gen Z or Gen Alpha, they're between those those ages, and you know, we've certainly never drummed it down their throat that they are a failure unless they strive to buy a home. You know, and that's but that's hard when the government are you know, they are tinkering around the edges, but they're they're pretty big policy moves that they're putting forward to try and encourage more people to buy. I mean, I said it in COVID, you know, people were being offered mortgage breaks over COVID. Why weren't they being offered rental breaks? You know, because it's it's the same thing. And for a lot of people, their rent is higher than their mortgage.

SPEAKER_00: 39:26

But there's a deeper issue here, and the deeper issue of democracy. Because renters are looked at as second-class citizens and somehow lesser citizens, we do renters do not have the same democratic stability as those who are homeowners. They are subject to more onerous checks and balances, they are not given the freedoms in their homes to do a lot of what they could should be able to do. They are not able to use their homes in the way that a homeowner is able to use them. Now, there are aspects of this which are undemandemocratic, and we live in a democracy, the older, one of the oldest democracies. So there's a there's a point when all of these renters are finally going to be realized as voters. And oh my God, we better look after these people. Now, Bill Teren came in to provide an alternative to some of the negativity that was around the PRS, and that's not to say there aren't any good people in the PRS. There's many, many good landlords, but there unfortunately there's a perception that everybody is is is bad and it does a bad job, and that's not true. But Built to Rend recognized that there was an opportunity to produce something different, yet another innovation from renting, and provide an alternative which is institutionally backed and should be able to deliver at scale. So our sense is that we could deliver two million homes. Two million homes is the capacity within built to rent, and attract over 300 billion pounds of investment into the UK. But to get that, you've got to pull the built-in rent lever. You've got to make it easier for built-to-rent to get off the ground. I think the government needs to really think hard. We should we look discounting 106 agreements to get a volume established, promote renting as a positive thing, to get rid of this cultural illegitimacy and this this democratic ill this democratic inequality as well. So, yeah, in a world where diversity is really, really important, renters are part of that diversity too, and we need to give them recognise the value that they bring to society.

SPEAKER_04: 41:29

I was just thinking that with the rise of BTR, and I think and and I don't think that the public really understand what it is, but you know, moving forward, hopefully, you know, with with some good marketing efforts, that will be the case. The the rhetoric that I hear is I don't want to rent because I don't want to pay somebody else's mortgage. And I guess because people can see their landlord, it's a physical person. I wonder if with the move towards BTR, that paying somebody else's mortgage might not be a thing. Maybe that will change because that landlord's not visible. You know, nobody's going to be necessarily thinking about paying, you know, paying an operator's mortgage. It doesn't really work that way. But they've got to understand the professionalism and the management side of what BTR offers. And controversially or not, I still think that BTR marketers are still focusing too much on amenity-led communications rather than the security of tenure, rather than the professionalization of the management. That for me is the winner. And until people really start communicating that, I'm not sure we're going to move away from that. I don't want to pay somebody else's mortgage side of things.

SPEAKER_00: 42:44

I completely agree. And I mean, on the mortgage, I'm on all your points. On the mortgage side, you're really contributing to your own pension, you know, because the people who are developing bills of rent are the big, big pension funds. So it's not that you're not just throwing your money away. You're you're you're in some way shoring up um your own pension if you're with those those organizations. So, you know, it's not it it does have a direct and indirect benefit to society in that sort of short and long term uh in terms of that money. But of course, the the value is not going to probably be as great as if you had a property value increase over over 20 years or whatever the case may be. But I do think the the the the communication of built to rent is poor. We're working hard on that. We've formed the built to rent alliance, which is uh collaboration between us and the BPF and industry leaders chaired by um um Clive Betts, who was the who who chaired the um uh cross-party housing committee for many, many years. So he's he's a great great person and very knowledgeable. We have developed our code of practice, which you know we have used the the um PBSA code of practice as a as a benchmark. We in fact I've used the same guys who wrote that to help us get ours. This is now currently uh with the ombudsman, we're gonna get his feedback on it. And that's our social contract. You know, call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day, we want to say to society and to government, judge us by these standards. And it's about building trust. If we strip it all away, all of these things are about building trust and building the ability to say, I can have a good life here, and I know that this landlord is going to support me in having a good life here. And that talks to the security of tenure, it talks to the quality of accommodation, it talks to the promotion of community within those spaces. And I think the the the the sector not only needs to explain the value of renting, the value of built-to-rent and explain actually what it is, it also needs to say we aren't we are not scared to put our money where our mouth is and sign up to a charter that the gut that we hope in time the government will recognize as being good and proper and to the benefit of both the investment and the operating world as well as the consumer. And when we get there, and hopefully that's not too far away now, we can say that we have played a good game, that we have said we have laid our cars on the table and and and we want to be judged by by that. And I think that hopefully that will also add to an understanding of the value of the built-to-rent second specifically, of course, but but just that there are good people in renting and it's not a it's not you are not an adequate because you rent.

SPEAKER_05: 45:36

Absolutely, and I think we could probably go for longer on this topic, but I'm conscious of the time. But it is a fascinating topic, and I think there is more work to do in educating people about the rental opportunities out there. Before we close out, we did have make a big announcement um this week on LinkedIn about UK Reef. We have been attending over the past couple of years, and we have noted the lack of content involving PBSA, co-living, BTR, and university accommodation. And after speaking with you all, it would seem that I think everyone does agree. Um so, with the support of the UK Reef organizers, thank you very much. Um the House team are going to be creating House the Shared Living Summit at the 2026 UK Reef in Leeds from the 19th to the 21st of May. It's gonna be a great event. You can expect all the good things that you get from Housed every week. We will be doing live podcasts, amazing panel discussions, um, speaking about challenging topics, live youth forums, and great networking opportunities and very much more. But ultimately, we can't do it alone and we wouldn't want to. You know, we're part of the sector and we want to take the sector with us. So you asked for this. So now we're inviting you all to partner with us to make this an event to remember. We're working at the moment behind the scenes on a media pack and what that will look like. Um if you do want to be the first to hear about partnership opportunities, please do get in touch. You don't you're not committing to anything. If you do get in touch, you're just letting us know that you might be interested. And if you do, we'll ensure you're on the prior priority list for more details. And we're just really excited to be taking Housed ontour and you all with us. Sarah, as part of that, I know you went to a dinner last week. I don't know if you quickly want to just update us on kind of what that was about and what happened.

SPEAKER_04: 47:24

Yeah, I was I didn't know what to expect when I was invited to a UK Reef dinner, and it was all about the new towns plan for the UK. It was really collaborative, informative, and welcoming, and it just made me think actually that's what UK Reef is about. It's it pulls you out of your silo, leverages your experience and your knowledge by being immersed really in the whole real estate sector. Um, I think all too often, you know, we go to our PBSA events, our BTR events, our co-living events, but UK Reef is something that builds on so much more than that. You can buy early release tickets at 2026.ukreef.com forward slash registration if you haven't already. Although by partnering with us, many of our packages will have tickets included as well. Um, so we look forward to talking about our plans for it and getting everyone's feedback and buy-in over the next few months on that as well.

SPEAKER_05: 48:16

That's great. So, as we close out, a big, big thank you to you, Brendan. It's been a fascinating conversation. So, thank you very much for joining us. Um, and I know Dan is very pleased that he was able to take a week off for his maternity leave. So, thank you. Thank you to my student halls for being our headline sponsor for the season. Your support is always hugely appreciated. And of course, thank you also to Utopi and Wash Station for joining us again for season five. We're also grateful for your support. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it. I think it's been fascinating to have Brendan here, so a big thank you again. If you've got any hot topics or ideas of what you want to cover off in season five from PPSA, BTR, co living, later living, HMOs, or university accommodation, please do get in touch with us at hello at housepodcast.com. And we will see you all next week.