Is Social Media Undervalued in the Sector? Are Investors Getting More Realistic? The Unite Share Price and Have Wellbeing Claims Become a Box-Ticking Exercise? Plus data from Cushman & Wakefield and Native.

Dan Smith is back to join Deenie Lee and Sarah Canning for episode 77 of Housed. As well as hearing about Dan's new arrival, the team discuss:

- Labour's pledge to build 1.5 million Homes
- The native Student life in 2025/26 report
- Whether social media is undervalued as a marketing tool
- Operators using box-ticking wellbeing claims
- The maintenance loan gap driving affordability crunch
- Cushman & Wakefield UK Student Accommodation Report
- Unite Students  performance report and share price

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

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 New Dad Update And Sponsor Intros
• 3:40 Ambulance Dash And NHS Gratitude
• 6:59 Panorama’s 1.5 Million Homes Debate
• 12:30 Owning vs Renting And Community-Led Housing
• 16:40 Native Report: Authenticity Over Hype
• 22:40 Resident-Led Content That Actually Converts
• 27:20 The Overloaded Social Media Role
• 31:00 Can AI Free Site Teams’ Time
• 34:40 Students Want Life Skills Not Slogans
• 40:40 Partnerships, Affordability, And On‑Campus Activations

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to House to the Shared Living podcast. We loved having Brendan Gerity last week as guest hosts, but this week Dan has popped into the studio amidst his paternity leave. So we'll hear more from him shortly. First, introductions. I'm Sarah Kenning from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

I'm Dan Smith from Resi Consultancy and Verberflow AI.

SPEAKER_03: 0:20

And I'm Dini Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists. Now let's just hear a word from our headline sponsor.

SPEAKER_02: 0:26

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

SPEAKER_03: 0:37

Dan and the team from MyStudent Halls have been supporters of House since the beginning, and we are so grateful they're here once again. We know anyone working in student accommodation is busy budget setting and rent setting. 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 also a huge thank you to Wash Station and Utopia for coming back and sponsoring House once again. We'll hear more from them later. So Dan, firstly, the most important thing, last time we heard from you, Em went into Labour live on the podcast, basically. That was uh two weeks ago. So how are you and the family doing now?

SPEAKER_01: 1:13

We're great now. Yeah, uh for those of you who uh may see a screenshot of this, I am looking fairly dishevelled. I am extremely tired and currently wearing my dressing gown, even though it's 9.30 in the morning. But yeah, we we had a really lovely home birth planned. And as Mike Tyson once said, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. And that is pretty much how it felt like we got emergency blue-lighted into the hospital after 24 hours of labour, uh, because uh little Bodie was very stuck indeed. So managed to get him out, but had uh a seven-day stay in hospital because they were a bit worried about sepsis and meningitis and all of that. And I have to say the care we received was mind-blowingly good. It it genuinely was. There's lots more that I'll I'll say about this, and that's the bit that really got me emotional when I was thanking people. And during during the hospital stay, obviously there's a hormone crash for women, but there is actually also one for men. I was a mess. I literally it did not take much to to set me off. But most of the time it was you know in thanking all the doctors that had caught this sepsis so early. Literally, the moment he came out, they they realised. And he is now fighting fit, hasn't dropped any weight, he's in great shape, and yeah, doing really well, as is as is M2. She was she was incredible, absolutely incredible. Like you know, if I don't want to talk too much about it because I know that you're not supposed to sort of push your birth story on people, but if you do find me and you want to know, or you do sort of come across me and you want to know what happened, then do let me know. But all is well now and very grateful to be back. Thanks very much to the NHS in particular. Happy that we're all safe and sound.

SPEAKER_03: 2:54

That's good to hear. It you know, it's an emotive and it can be a scary time as well. But you're all back where you belong now, all together as a family, and you've obviously got a little bit more time off. So we won't take up too much of your time this morning. We'll get on with the podcast and you can go back to changing nappies and winding little Bodie.

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

Well, thank you very much. And and yeah, one thing I should just say is that if ever you see anyone tailgating an ambulance, just let them do it because you'd never know who that person is. I turns out when you tailgate an ambulance, people think that you're being a bit of a tool, and so they tend to try and cut you up. And that's exactly what happened to me. So I literally just about made the berth. It was touch and go. But yeah, just a just a little point of note there.

SPEAKER_03: 3:40

Noted. Right, so on with the show. So, Dan, I don't know if you watched Panorama last night. I caught it and it was about the race to build 1.5 million homes. We haven't, as a team, had a chance to digest it yet, so we might get onto it in a couple of weeks' time once we've had a chance to watch it. But well recommended, really interesting stuff, really balanced data, I thought, um, some really, really interesting stuff on social housing as well. So we're not going to talk about it today because it was only on last night, but that's just my recommendation for you guys to catch up with iPlayer.

SPEAKER_04: 4:12

So is it a positive story that we're gonna achieve this race to build 1.5 homes, or shall I just watch it and find out?

SPEAKER_03: 4:19

There's some really interesting bits about MMC, about modern methods of construction. There's some stuff about NIMBYism, which made me really, really, really cross. And like I said, the bit about social housing was really, really interesting. I just I do actually we're not gonna talk about it, but I do just want to share this kind of fact that kind of blew my mind, really. So obviously we know that there's but there's hard, you know, so few much fewer council housing than there was because it all got sold under um Margaret Thatcher's reign. But the thing that I found really, really amazing is we're talking about affordable housing. Now, how much money is the government giving away in housing benefit because rent isn't affordable? So this lady who was uh I think an urban socialist, which just sounds like the most amazing job ever, she was basically saying that you're it's it makes no sense because actually the government are giving away so much money in housing benefit because people can't afford to rent. So actually, if you made it more affordable to rent, then they wouldn't have to give away so much in benefits. So there was a lot about how to do that and partnerships and you know, the way that maybe people need to come before profit. Obviously, we hear a lot about what can and can't be viable to build. And there are definitely, I'd say, some comments and some lessons to be learned in the programme about as well, because it's not a sustainable housing market if it's all about profit because there's so many people that need homes.

SPEAKER_01: 5:47

I I I haven't watched it, so it's been been pretty busy, but I have seen quite a lot of coverage of Steve Reed, the housing minister, effectively saying, judge me on my results, and I expect to be fired if I don't build one and a half million homes over the course of the parliament. I mean, that is a bold statement. Firstly, I hate the fact that he's wearing these MAGA hats, the sort of build baby build red hats, like uh just that's ridiculously cringy. But I do appreciate that he's sort of playing to the masses there. I just think that he is missing a trick, Sarah, to talk about what you're you know, the the rental sector. All the focus so far that he's mentioning is about working with the likes of Bellway or Blorholmes or Persiman or any of the actual house builders. Well, you know, what about the Grangers or the Unites or the Quintaines or the Moders or the IQs or the whoever else? Like, why are we not thinking more about BTR single-family housing as well? Like, we've got to really be exploring that too. That's what I feel anyway.

SPEAKER_03: 6:56

Yeah, and it did frustrate me. He was on the programme and he said exactly that that he deserves to not have a job if he can't pull this off, basically. But he did keep pushing the rhetoric of everybody should have the possibility of owning their own home. And if you heard the podcast last week with Brendan, you know, we did talk about how that is still a really frustrating conversation. So that is still the case. You know, it's not it's not going to be within everybody's reach to own a home, but it should be within everybody's reach to rent their own home. And there was this amazing story about this um village in, I think it was in Stroud, and they collectively, the residents had bought a piece of land and built their own social housing so that people could stay in the village that they'd grown up in and had children in, and that that was an incredible story. So there are potentially, like I said, some innovative things that don't have to involve the top 11 house builders in the in the UK, basically.

SPEAKER_04: 7:53

So I just say I think Brendan mentioned this last week, but even if there is still a process of you know giving people the access to buy or the opportunity to buy, people still have to rent in their lifetimes at some point. Everyone's had to rent. And it's ignoring that sector completely just seems foolhardy in when you're looking at housing for the masses ultimately.

SPEAKER_03: 8:14

Well, well, exactly. I mean, people that go to university at 18, they're gonna be renting. It's unlikely that they're going to leave school and buy a home. Similarly, when they leave university and they're maybe exploring which city to live in and what their job may involve and you know, starting to build up a salary, you know, maybe you know, they're gonna want to rent. Maybe people who have just moved, you know, found their life partner but don't want to commit to a mortgage together, they're gonna want to rent. You know, if you're relocating, you're probably gonna want to rent. So you're absolutely right. There are, you know, e there's always gonna be reasons to rent instead of buy. So often saying we weren't gonna dissect that programme, we've done a pretty good job of doing that, um, but recommend that you guys catch up on iPlayer and let us know what you think. We're just gonna move on now to something a little bit different. So, Native have recently produced a report, the 2526 student report. It's not about living or lifestyle particularly, but it is really interesting about what students, what Gen Z want to see, what they want to hear, what kind of content they want to immerse themselves in. There's a few stats that that jumped out to me, so I'll be interested to hear what Dan and Deanny, what you think. This comes up a lot, is that inauthenticity that young people really want to see real life, they want to see real people, they want to hear from about reviews, they want to see evidence, they really don't like staged content, really. It's it's hard, you know, from a marketeer's point of view because it's really difficult sometimes to coordinate people to create authentic content. You know, with TikTok, it's great because it can be less polished, less planned, less curated, I guess. But, you know, on websites in collateral, people still like their really lovely, shiny photo shoots, show flat shoots, etc. What do you guys think about that? Is it achievable to just push out in PBSA particularly kind of authentic content?

SPEAKER_04: 10:08

It's definitely possible to push out authentic and realistic content. And I think it is about getting that balance right between the reality of where you're living, you know, you don't want to polish it too much so that when people arrive it doesn't look like what they're buying. So I think there is definitely the ability to get that balance right. I think my overriding kind of view of where this is is that this is a generation that's grown up on social media that's grown up on people saying how great and I guess being bigger and bolder about how great things are than possibly reality. And it kind of, you know, I think everyone always wants authentic authenticity throughout generations. But I think that I don't think us as a generation would say, Oh yeah, we want authentic brands, but the fact that this is coming out loud and clear is just showing that actually when you've grown up on social media and it's all about big bold statements, big bold this, actually that more realistic, real, authentic is is really important because they've grown up on a life probably of not having that, and you can trust people when you feel that it's real, and that is really important. And I've I've you know, as a marketeer, I've always said that I think that the way that social media has been used over the last five, ten years will the next generation will have backlash against it because it's not sustainable, I don't think, in how it's using them. Maybe this is is is where we're starting to see that. Who knows whether I'm right or wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 11:33

I I think this is where student crowd is such a powerful platform, you know, that sort of peer reviews and that review culture is just so important. And you know, I I look at when I think that marketing is being done best, it's when the sales team aren't involved. So, you know, think about agents, for example. Obviously, sales team is involved in the marketing there, they're going to paint a really rosy picture of some markets or certain properties or locations. It's exactly the same with operators. You're going to have the best possible picture of your rooms and you're going to make sure that everything is really shiny and new and cleaned and perfect. And actually, I think people want that genuine, authentic content that is put out there by residents. Whether it's BTR or PBSA or co-living, it doesn't really matter. I think that that is a massive opportunity, not just to have you know influencers or micro influencers, but to have genuine students, you know, likable, affable students to walk through your property to talk about the life there. And I don't think we do nearly enough of that. And when we do do it as an industry, the shared living industry, it feels a little bit staged, like interview presence. Well, why not give a bit of your budget to one of your residents to say, listen, can you just create us some vlogs or whatever it might be to just to showcase certain elements of this? Make it I'm not talking Blair Witch project, you know, running around with a sort of camcorder type thing. I'm saying you need some good production values here as well. But just get some content created by your residents because that is going to be the most important marketing tool that you can have. That word of mouth, spreading that, making sure that it's totally authentic. I think that's that's absolutely key. You can do that for multiple different demographics, postgrads, undergrads, Indian students, Chinese, whatever it might be, and and I I think that is a massive opportunity. Now, there are some that do that already. I've seen some from the likes of Vita and and various others too, who are super focused on China, for example, and have got their own marketing team working with residents on on that. But yeah, how can we make it more authentic? How can we have it as the voice of the resident rather than just the voice of the marketing and sales team?

SPEAKER_03: 13:47

I'm going to get a little bit ranty now. So apologies, listeners. We we see a lot of marketing departments are really under-resourced, and that social media executive role has been used as an everything role. You know, that a social media exec is expected to create content, to schedule content, to edit the content, to manage content creators, and across B2B and B2C platforms, there's a real difference between a content creator and a social media exec. You know, you then need to do reporting, you need to do analysis, you need to do training, you need to keep up to date with trends, etc. It's a really, really big role. And I don't disagree with you, Dan. I think maybe traditional marketing has changed. You know, I think this is traditional marketing now, but there needs to be more time, more resource, and more respect given to those people that are doing social media. I think people belittle that role. I don't think people understand social media, and I think quite often it's given to kind of university or school leavers as a little project, and it and it's not, it's so much more important than that. It needs to be given the respect and the salary and the team that it deserves.

SPEAKER_04: 14:59

And I think that's absolutely the point, Sarah. It it isn't just an offshoot of marketing that I've got to do some social media. And I've said this before: social media is just another channel. It's like TV was a channel back in the day, or radio was a channel back in the day, social media is just another channel, and actually it's a big part of your marketing mix, whereas TV and radio isn't anymore. So you need to put the resource to that, and you know, in comparison to radio and TV advertising, it's probably more cost-effective and a lot cheaper to manage, but people aren't investing it in that way, and that's the problem. I think this idea that new marketing tools, although they're not really new anymore, are something different, they're not. It's just part of your marketing mix, and you've got to treat it the same as you would any marketing channel.

SPEAKER_01: 15:42

With all your clients, do you work on keeping the social media management central, or are there times when you can sort of devolve that power to the property managers? Because uh we we tried that at at Nido, and for a couple of the assets, it worked really well, primarily because they were younger general managers, which sounds quite ageist, but I just think that they were obviously more in tune with what residents would want. But um, is it mostly held at HQ or or are you able to devolve any of that?

SPEAKER_04: 16:12

I think this is connected to probably what we've just said is that time and time again, you it can be devolved properties, but it's got to be part of the job description. So you've got to recruit people that is part of their job description, and they know that's part of their job description, and it's a skill and ability and a passion that they have. And it can then be, you know, they can collect the content, and that can be edited, designed, distributed via a central team, but you can't just hire a really good operator and say, Oh, by by the way, you've got to now do some content creation, and that's the problem. And that that happens with sales, it happens with loads of things in the sector, is that people aren't haven't got the right job descriptions in place.

SPEAKER_03: 16:53

No, and I think with that devolution of social media as well, they need the tools. I mean, we've worked with clients and they haven't even given their staff work phones, and they're expecting staff to create content on their personal phones. That is not okay. You know, there is no boundary there. But they need to be given the right tools, they need to be given training. You know, if it's part of their job, make it something that they can be proud of and that they can add to their CV. But let's be honest, operations teams, you know, they have other priorities. You know, if you know something tragic happens in the building, if they've got loads of debt to chase, if there's, I don't know, a maintenance problem, they're not going to go around with their phone creating social media content, and nor should they. So you have to be realistic about what the outcomes are and what the priorities are, you know, whether it's in their job descriptions or or not. But you know, if you've got a big portfolio, you need a bigger centralized team to manage that instead.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

That's really interesting that you've just said that. All of those things that you've just mentioned, I know that AI can take care of, not to the fullest extent, but can definitely triage and save some time there. So I can see there's going to be a massive change in the way that we write the job descriptions and the expectations that we've got of those site teams because their work streams will be streamlined and they'll be able to spend more time potentially on curating that social media and really building that community. So I I think HR teams are going to be very busy over the course of the next, you know, 10. Well, to be fair, it's going to be next year to two years, realistically. But but yeah, I do see that there could be more opportunity there for sure for social media at site.

SPEAKER_04: 18:37

You're very optimistic there, Dan, that these job descriptions are going to get changed for AI because we've had social media and SARS for a very long time and they're still not in the job descriptions.

SPEAKER_01: 18:45

Yeah, I just think that AI is the watershed moment really for HR teams to really get those job descriptions in order. Because of the amount of tasks that it can do, uh and this isn't promo, this is just me talking in general terms, so I won't even mention the V-word. So I I know that those roles are changing at light speed, and it's changing at HQ, it's changing at the site team level, and that's where there is more opportunity to say, okay, so the site teams are going to have you know a little bit more time on their hands, you would hope, where they can really focus on the resident. And I think that is where the USPs for each operator is going to be. How can we make sure that our site teams are now not chasing debt or triaging maintenance or dealing with late payments or whatever, or or sending out check-in emails or whatever? How can we make sure they are curating that community? And I think that's where social media has a really important role to play. And we just need to be a bit more forward-thinking in terms of what our expectations are of the site teams, I think.

SPEAKER_04: 19:48

I don't disagree. I just think it's I think it's very altruistic to think that's going to be done.

SPEAKER_03: 19:53

I will break up this debate between Deanny and Dan. I'll move on to the next point because it's it's linked to what you just said. So the other thing in this native report is that students are rejecting cliches like forced influencer tie-ins, lazy slang, or generic we understand students campaigns. They reward authenticity, real value, and practical help. Now, this really um touched a nerve with me because I've been judging the Property Week Student Accommodation Awards and I have read the same generic we understand students, we care about community and well-being from nearly every entry that I've I've read. I I take that as a given. Why why are you operating, why are you working in student accommodation if you don't care about community and well-being? I I I want to see evidence, like what stands you apart from that. And it seems like from this report that the students don't want to hear it anymore. You know, it's bland, it's vanilla, you know, we need something, they need something that cuts through. And and what they really want is life skills. And Deanny, we hear this a lot in our youth forums, don't we? That they really don't feel that their accommodation, that their landlord needs to provide entertainment for them. They find that themselves. But what they do want is life skills, they want help with CV writing, they want to learn languages, they want to learn about crafts, they want to learn about culture, cooking, cleaning, and those kind of things. And that is something that I think really kind of cuts through. One entry, and I won't mention them because I don't think I'm allowed to. There is an operator out there who is providing mental health first aid training to their residents. That's phenomenal. You know, I've read people that are doing first aid training for their residents. That is brilliant. That's that's what they're talking about, and that will really cut through.

SPEAKER_01: 21:42

I really agree. I think you know, we are obviously we do a lot of tender processes uh at Resi Consultancy. We've got two ongoing at the moment, pretty big ones, and the pitches and the the way that the operators are standing out, it it's there's not that much differentiation. Like I I think we're coming down to marginal gains. Like between all of the third-party operators that are throwing their hats in the ring for all of these tender processes, they're all very good. They all know how to talk to investors, they all know how to operate and run buildings extremely well. So, what are those marginal gains that are going to make you stand out? And how do we make them not marginal? How do we ensure that the operators can focus the you know, the investors can understand them, the operators can really focus on that again, community building, but it's it's it's upskilling the resident in whatever way they want to be upskilled if that's the work if that's what they're looking for. So mental first aid courses, fantastic, you know, or general first aid course is brilliant. CV writing classes, it goes back to some of the things we did at Nido a while back. We thought we were kind of pioneering with some of that stuff, but I I think there's a massive opportunity here to to really focus on on that social side of of CSR almost and say, right, the focus is the resident. This is going to be the way that we can really attract more business as an operator, but also more residents into our beds.

SPEAKER_04: 23:14

I think that I think that the next content topic we're going to talk about, I know we're going to talk about affordability. And I think everything we've been saying is, I guess, in some respects, about adding costs and resources into do this well. And how do you do that in a world where we're trying to be more affordable? But actually, what this report is also saying is that actually people really engage with in-person experiment experiential advertising, on-campus advertising. And you know, I've explored this in the past, but is there more ways to bring more private companies into student accommodation to help with that? So that actually it's not always a cost of additional resources. Like, is there ways to to develop those partnerships more innovatively that actually brands are getting access to real students that can be customers for life, and you're not having to add additional cost, whether that is that they're investing in that mental health first aid training for your residents? But we've got to try and find ways to make accommodation more affordable, and we can't always do that by adding more resources. So, what's the way that we can be innovative in how we do this?

SPEAKER_03: 24:22

But just to play devil's advocate, finding those partnerships, curating those partnerships and managing those relationships needs a resource as well. And again, that's quite often thrown into the social media exec role. Um, but actually having a um community manager, um, and that could be across a whole portfolio. It doesn't need to be per building. That would be the kind of person that that could make that happen. Yeah, totally agree. We're going to move on to another topic now, but if you're interested in what students think about brands, then download the native report. We're now going to hear from one of our sponsors.

SPEAKER_04: 24:57

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: 25:04

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_03: 25:13

If you're in asset management or operations and care about performance, utopia is your essential partner. Find out more at utopi.co.uk. That's utopi.co.uk. Thank you so much to Utopia for sponsoring House. We love having you on board and we're loving seeing you winning loads and loads of awards this season. So congratulations and long may it continue. We're going to now talk about the Cushman and Wakefield Student Accommodation Report, probably a topic close to your heart, Dan. We're kind of taking off where we we left off when you were recorded when we were in our last episode. Actually, there's some there's some honest data in this report, I would say. Yeah, and I think Dan, you were hearing some feedback from the GSL report about a little bit more reality as well creeping in.

SPEAKER_01: 26:00

Yeah, so obviously the GSL uh student living conference was this week. And yeah, it just sounds like the investor plenary session that happens there wasn't just backslapping, and it wasn't just like, hey, isn't this great? We've pushed our rents 35% this year. It was very much like, hey, this is getting a bit tougher. It has been tougher, there's some significant headwinds out there, there's still plenty of opportunity for the right operators, the right investors, you know, looking at the right buildings and developments, but just seems like a lot more realism out there. And I think that is coming from operators. I think investors are actually listening to operators, but the occupancy is definitely talking. And I think there's a real acknowledgement across the board, apart from a few agents out there, that it's getting tougher. Because some of these reports that were written in the summer, you know, the the PBSA reports written by the agents in the summer, it's a very different picture now because we know what happened in clearing. We know that the international students didn't arrive in those numbers that we were hoping for, in particular the postgrads. And we know that virtually every city has pockets of under-occupancy. That's not to say that you know it's it's not still a resilient asset class, but it's been a much more difficult year. I do not see that getting any better. So I think that this report uh was much more realistic than than most, actually. So fair play to Cushman and Wakefield. I think it does give a good idea of where things are up to. And we'll come on to it in a second. I think the Unite report also really paints a picture of the industry as as to where it's up to in 2025, with effectively uh, you know, quite a difficult year, but also then probably a few more difficult years ahead of it as well. So yeah, I thought it was a good one. Uh, did did you guys have a read?

SPEAKER_03: 27:54

Yeah, there's some interesting stats that I just wanted to pick out as well. Just some question marks, and we you know, we have delved into this over the last few weeks, is kind of don't take data as you see it as black and white. There are some question marks to be had. So, for example, they state that the university rental growth has outstripped private sector for the first time in seven years. My note next to this is but we don't know the occupancy. So the university rental growth is set at 4.44%, and the rent private sector um 1.16%, but we don't know the occupancy. So you can have whatever rent you want as a headline rent. We know that they're a void bed. So what does that really mean? Does it mean that universities have just pushed their rent too much and they've got more voids, and we might see that reducing down again next year?

SPEAKER_01: 28:41

I actually think a lot of it is that universities are beholden to private partners uh in terms of the way they've built their assets with um, you know, the a lot of joint venture partnerships. And so there is a real expectation that you need to be driving those rents quite significantly from from some of these providers, not all of them, but but certainly some of them that I've worked with and spoken to. And yeah, it does there's there's a reason that we're getting a lot of calls from universities saying, um, we're quite behind. How do we fill our beds now? What do we look for? You know, what agents should we be targeting? And you know, I I'm doing one of the Cubo keynotes, the University Business Officers Conference uh in November in Birmingham, and that is going to be one of the focuses that that I sort of really go to town on. Like, how do you actually fill your beds by going to agents or marketplaces? So it's it's going to be really interesting to see how competitive universities become against the private PBSA providers and BTR and co living and you know uh all of the other sectors too.

SPEAKER_04: 29:45

But uh we did speak about this briefly last week, Dan. But even if there is private investment in those university beds, there still needs to be a partnership there, and it still needs to be a long term partnership, like really hurting universities in that scenario is not really going to help your long term investment. And I think people think for far too long we've looked at trends as just a blip in the sector and it'll be all right. And actually, I think we've got to look at what is our long-term approach here and how do we make sure we keep it sustainable for the five, ten years, not just are we going to hit our targets this year?

SPEAKER_01: 30:14

Totally agree. There's so much short-termism around. Sorry, Sarah, there's so much short-termism. I I I think that this is where institutional capital really has a lot to play because we need that 10-year minimum capital. Like five years, maybe you can do a bit with that, but ten years, yes, you can really think, okay, we're in it for the long haul. We don't need double digit rises each year. We can just sit with our three, maybe four percent if we're lucky, of for rental rises each year. I think that's where there's a massive opportunity here. And I think the market, I'll be honest, I think the market is turning in that direction already. Uh because of the occupancy challenges we've seen in multiple locations this year and how difficult it is to mobilize an asset at 100% at the revenue and the underwriting. I think that that's where the market and the capital will start to turn more towards that long-term strategic investment rather than the short term, build it, flip it, and then move on.

SPEAKER_03: 31:07

On that note, the other stat that I have a question mark next to is that yields remain stable at 4.25% Prime London and 5.25% super prime regional. But again, what is the occupancy? What are the voids? What are the cancellations? What are the incentives around that? You know, we know that they're often hidden or packaged together or put under a marketing budget. So again, I think there's just some question marks around that as well. So I think it's worth it's worth reading, it's worth looking into. There's some um data around postgraduates, there's some data um around the demand pool as well. So if you're interested, then download the Cushman and Wakefield student accommodation report.

SPEAKER_04: 31:47

Sorry, I just wanted to say before we close on this, is that the other thing that I think is really important to mention from the report is around the the number of beds above the maximum maintenance loan, um, which is 17% and 24.4% of private beds, which compared 2016 and 2017, it was 3.7% and 5.3%. That is a huge shift of people that, and yes, part of that is the maintenance loan isn't going up as it should be, but that is a huge number of people that can't afford. Although it will be next year, as was announced yesterday by the government, but hasn't been up till now. So you can see where this affordability issue is, and I think that is that that you know is a big part of the problem. And there is a threshold, people can only afford what they can afford, and they just can't afford it. And I think that is is the key point. And yes, there was good news yesterday when it comes to those maintenance loans, but that is a big shift in numbers.

SPEAKER_01: 32:39

Well one thing I I know we've just we've just been saying, like great report. It is, it is a good report. It's got a lot of the data that I think is missing from from some of the others, in particular some of the postgrad information. But I do still think that they are oversimplifying this student-to-bed ratio here, you know, by saying it's you know 1.9 to 1 by 2030, that more students will be unable to access PBSA than is currently the case. I we know they don't just want PBSA guys, they want BTR, they want HMO, they want they're commuting a lot more, they want university halls. It is time to give us that granular data across multiple sectors. So I would just caveat the fact that yes, great report, but we still need more granular data on other sectors. You cannot look at PBSA in isolation anymore. And if you do, it will this mislead the market.

SPEAKER_03: 33:35

No, I totally agree, and we'll we'll keep an eye out for anyone that is able to provide that granular data. Um, we'd love to read it, and it would completely change the investment landscape if we knew that. We're just going to go and hear from one of our other sponsors.

SPEAKER_00: 33:48

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_03: 33:59

Thank you very much, Wash Station, and for supporting us once again. And we really value you being part of the House Podcast family and urge anybody that is operating a shared living building get in touch with John and the team there. Connected to the previous topic that we've just been talking about, we're just going to move on to talk about the latest Unite report. They've produced their end of year results to September 25. Again, like you said, Dan, quite refreshingly honest. They have to be. So, you know, you can't question the data that they're producing. Some highlights that I've pulled out is Unite sales delivered 4% rental growth down from 8.2% the year before. 8.2% sounds a little bit toppy. So I know we were saying that sometimes we can't talk about anomalies, but it feels like they recognize that that was an anomaly and have gone sort of much down to much more realistic rental growth.

SPEAKER_01: 34:50

Calling it that normalization of demand, aren't they? Uh, I think that that's the term that Unite have used and that everyone else is now using as well to excuse more difficult performance. I know not excuse more difficult performance. It it's it it just is a nature of the market like that. We had pent-up demand post-COVID. This is the normalization of demand. But we we called this on the podcast, and I've called this on LinkedIn, saying each of the Unite reports where they were 9% behind occupancy, then 6%, then they were expecting to pretty much get where they thought they would, which would be 97.5% occupancy, and then hitting their revenue targets, something had to give. Like we we called that pretty early. This isn't an I told you so moment, but it was just felt like it was pretty obvious. Now the Unite share price is I kind of feel for them there. There's not there's not much more that you could be doing, but it's dropped 30, I think 35% in in a year, and it's really been in free fall over the course of the last week or so since this report. And I do think that this is because the market's just getting tougher. This isn't just a blip year, this is normal now, and so you're not going to be getting your 8% year on year. You're gonna be getting 3%, maybe 4% if you're lucky, and you're not gonna be hitting your 98, 99% occupancy as you were in previous years. It is far more competitive out there, not just amongst PBSA with the number of beds that are being built, but amongst other uh sectors as well. So I, you know, I do think Unite have had, I still think it's a good result. I still think they've had a good year. They've done more offers and more cashbacks, etc., than I've ever seen them do before, but that's because they were trying to get that occupancy up to then say, well, hey, we've hit the occupancy targets, but the revenue didn't quite get there. But yeah, we we we have called this quite a long time ago, and I think everybody else is has been expecting it. I did see Joss actually post on LinkedIn that this was the right time to buy Unite shares because of how much they've dropped. I'm I'm not so sure. Well, I'm not so sure. I think that'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I've recorded what the share price was when Joss bought, so we'll we'll see what that looks like in a year's time.

SPEAKER_03: 36:57

I mean, from an investor point of view, what is better? 100% occupancy at lower rent or 90% occupancy at higher rent?

SPEAKER_01: 37:06

Well, uh tricky because it depends on the financing. They don't want any rent drops because they may feel like if they're going through a refinancing or they need a value a new valuation or whatever it might be, they might say, well, look, you know, this is how much we've got booked in now, but we've got some voids, so we're gonna hit you know our targets in January and we're gonna go out at these rates and whatever it might be. I think occupancy is sanity, and I think that everybody needs to be focused on that personally. I would always prefer to be dropping rents and hitting 100% occupancy rather than you know really trying to keep it there. I've got some clients that just can't do that because they've got those refines, and so you know, they haven't been able to quite hit the occupancy because they had to keep their revenue as high as they could. They had to keep their their underwriting. And some of them then do it by the back door by cashbacks and market commissions of like 25% or 50% or whatever it might be. There's some ways of doing it, but yeah, occupancy is sanity and and yeah, don't get me wrong, revenue is sanity as well. But I think that the most important thing is to have a full building, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04: 38:10

But pricing isn't a finger in your air thing, and I'm just going to go at this price. There's lots of data out there. There's lots of people smart than I with data and Excel and being able to analyse lots of data and trends and what people can afford, what's going on in the marketplace, where your your property positioned. If that's done properly, you should be able to get an optimised rent for your market, which targets occupancy and targets the optimum rent you can get for your property. And I just don't feel that's happening in the market. And so, therefore, that idea of dropping rates shouldn't be a thing. Because with the analysis and all the homework that we've done, we should just get the rate right for the property you've got.

SPEAKER_01: 38:47

I agree, but I think some people got caught short in certain locations with a massive drop in applications for some universities and or or postgrads or specific courses or specific nationalities that just didn't turn up in the numbers that they had done previously. You know, there's there's a few examples of that. Bournemouth's probably quite a good one where that was a really difficult market this year. There's no one that's full, and it was, you know, there was there was no price that you could actually offer that, to be completely honest. There just wasn't the the the demand there, especially later on in the market. But you couldn't even catch that early on. So that was a market that caught everyone short this year. Uh, I think that will write itself more next year, but yeah, it's as much data as you can get as early as you can get, great. But all we're doing on the podcast and and you know, for for our client work is saying it's it is time to recalibrate. You have to set your rent rents low. And then if you get an opportunity to to yield them up as we as we go, then great. But right now, the focus should be on selling as much as you can as early as possible at as reasonable a rent as you can you can possibly afford. So it's more of a this is we're on the cautious or the sort of lower side of the business plans at the moment, uh, with a view to hopefully getting back to somewhere around expectations or maybe slightly above expectations at the at the end of next year. But getting that data on board is incredibly difficult and it takes a lot of conversations with universities, data providers, marketplaces, agents, other operators, investors, and that's again what you know what we do on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_03: 40:24

Right. We have come to the end. We need you to get back to your baby Dan. We didn't end up having time to talk about my new latest obsession, which is Applebee Blue Arms House gives Witherford Watson Man its second sterling prize win. So, really, really want to chat about that. Um, we're actually having a break next week because it's half term, and while Steenie and I don't have little tiny babies, we do have children and uh various activities to get them to. So for now, we'll say thank you to my student halls for being our headline sponsor. Your support is hugely appreciated, and of course, thank you to Utopia and Wash Station. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. And if ever you have hot topics or ideas that you want us to cover for the rest of season five from PBSA, BTR, co living, lady living, HMO, and university accommodation selectors, get in touch at hello at housepodcast.com. We're now taking a break, as we said, next week, so we will be back the following week. But in the meantime, please share with you and listen to the previous episodes. See you again soon.