Single Family Housing, Generational Shared Living and Allocating Residents in Communal Living

In this episode of Housed we talk about:
- Small business Sunday event hosted by Theo Paphitis
- Single Family Housing Association UK launch event
- Generational Shared Living
- Allocating Residents in Communal Living

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

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

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to the seventh episode of How's the Shared Living podcast with me Daniel Smith from Student Housing Consultancy,

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

and Dini Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_02: 0:14

So hopefully you've followed along for a few episodes already so far. And effectively, this is our opportunity to have a chat about what is happening in the shared living sectors. That's student housing, PBSA, bill to rent, BTR, co-living, any other sort of shared living sectors that there may be as well. So what we like to do is have a chat, find out about what we've been up to each week, and then discuss a few topics as we go. So Sarah, what have you been up to this week?

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

I guess the highlight from the last couple of weeks and has probably been attending the Small Business Sunday event in Birmingham hosted by Theo Paphitis. I do a little bit of writing for Student Pages magazine and Gareth the editor was kind enough to invite me along and basically what Theo Paphitis does is creates an opportunity and a network for people that run small businesses to have a shout out by him on Twitter and Instagram every Sunday and Student Pages won one of these shout outs which gave them access to this event that we went to and it was filled. It was a massive convention centre and I couldn't believe how big it was when I entered. There were about 1,500 representing small businesses from across the UK. It was really well organised. It was big. It was loud. It was in your face and it was unapologetic for that. And I just loved that. So whilst it wasn't sector specific about property or, you know, anything like that, what was really great is to see so many people running their small businesses. There are a lot of people from kind of the craft industries, lots of people kind of showing what their wares were, lots of amazing creativity, but also lots of discussions around the challenges about running small businesses, what the last couple of years have been like through COVID and Brexit and cost of living situation. And that was It felt like a warm hug, really. It was a really comfortable, enveloping space to be in with great speakers, really inspirational people that have set up their businesses from nothing. Really good exhibits as well. And yeah, just a really great environment to be in. So I would urge anybody that's listening that does run a small business to get involved in Small Business Sunday because it's I think the support that this organisation can give you, and it's the biggest free event, like non-trade, like trade event, but that's free in the country. So yeah, it can open doors that you don't even know exist potentially.

SPEAKER_02: 2:47

I remember seeing that probably a year or so ago on Twitter. I try and spend as little time on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it as possible because it can be a bit of a cesspit, to be completely honest. But that was one of the really useful things. And I did see it and thought it was something that I think I should be involved in because we do forget that we're not just within the property sector. We're running our own businesses here. And actually, I think that operators, investors, developers, we can also take a step outside of real estate for a second and start thinking, actually, we've built some pretty amazing businesses across the board. Whether you're a large operator, small operator or investor or whatever it might be, or a supplier or consultant, there are so many good businesses out there. So it's definitely worth thinking about either the support that you can get from places like the Institute of Directors or you know, Small Business Sunday or whatever it might be. And also thinking about the awards too, getting involved in your local business awards, because it certainly helps them. And I think the more that we can champion sort of regional, yeah, regional success, the better. So yeah, I think that's really a really sort of worthwhile point to bring forward. Dini, what have you been up to?

SPEAKER_01: 4:01

On top of that, we also attended the Single Family Housing Association UK launch in London, which was in association with Loft lots of other partners and i think that was a really really good to actually go and be a part of that and to that point of going to a different event that isn't always within this shared living sector and i think what was really apparent there was that it was a really diverse group of people there was lots of people that we knew there there was lots of people that we didn't know there and i think to both your points earlier that that getting out of the normal events that we attend in this sector is really beneficial and really powerful and i think what the single family housing association is doing is is more of what we've talked about is bringing that sector together on that collaboration point to really hone down how we all work together to deal with the situation that the country finds in with our housing and i think that was really inspirational the work they've already done obviously there's a lot of work to do but they're obviously speaking to the right government department speaking into the right organisations and trying to make a difference collaboratively so that everyone's working to the same objectives and benefits.

SPEAKER_00: 5:13

I think their mission statement is more housing for everyone, everywhere. And what they were quite keen to point out is they're not competing with traditional BTR apartments. This is BTR houses. And those housing developments wouldn't be being built in city centres where these high-rise apartment blocks that are highly amenity are anyway. This is about towns and villages and rural and suburbs to increase the housing stock available to rent primarily for families. Although, as they discussed, it's quite diverse, actually, the tenants that are moving in there. And they're not amenitised. They're small housing developments, but they are being built generally in communities already. So that is their amenity. That is their pool. There's already schools. There's already shops. There's already transport. There's already employment. So It's just really adding, I guess, to a lot of towns we're seeing lots of houses for sale being built. And this is just complementing it to enable more of, I guess, those families and different family groups that don't want to live in apartments in city centres. It's giving them really good quality, well-managed, houses to live in.

SPEAKER_02: 6:24

Right. I think there does need to be a lot more coordination between different sectors. So, you know, the more bodies and the more people that we can have helping to coordinate and helping, you know, the private sector to either lobby government or just work alongside and collaborate with the government, the better. And that's something that, you know, I've struggled on a personal level with, I've said in previous episodes, trying to lobby the government on behalf of the student housing industry in particular is pretty difficult. But when you think of the benefits that come from, uh, solution such as that or trying to effectively create PBSA so that some of the student HMO stock could be sent back or given back to the market or used for social housing or whatever it might be. There's so much to think about and I think that's something that's often overlooked. I think we're in a good situation in student housing with Paddy Jackman as the new CEO or relatively new CEO of Unipol because he's very much a strong voice for the sector and that's certainly what's needed but equally I think it will fall, any kind of lobbying at the moment will probably fall on deaf ears because the Labour Party don't necessarily want to listen to anyone at the moment. Not that they don't want to listen, they don't want to say exactly what they're doing before any election at the moment, very much keeping their manifesto close to their chest. And the Conservatives are pretty impossible to get through to at the best of times anyway. So lobbying is a bit of a thankless task at the moment. So if it can be done through the proper channels and the right associations, then I think that's more the better.

SPEAKER_00: 7:52

I think one point that came out of the single family housing association launch that Dini and I wondered is that there was no mention in the demographic of sharers and we wondered if that's something that's just not being seen at the moment we doubt that because it's the equivalent of an HMO basically and that we wonder if that's a significant market for kind of I guess graduates and young professionals in towns and it might actually bring more of that demographic into those kind of suburban settings potentially So, you know, keeping on the shared living theme, we wonder if that's something that we should keep an eye out on.

SPEAKER_01: 8:28

And that was

SPEAKER_00: 8:29

in the news this week

SPEAKER_01: 8:30

as well, where the rents are rising in those commuter towns by more so than inner cities. And I think that is one of the risks, I guess, is that, yes, we need to build more family homes outside of the cities. But equally, if sharers can't afford to live in the cities, then they're going to look to take these family homes. And it's kind of where are the restrictions and who can rent them? Yeah. And that's something that I don't know the answer to. But I think there's so many pressures in so many different areas that just building homes isn't necessarily going to necessarily be resided in the people that you're expecting to live in them because of those pressures.

SPEAKER_02: 9:05

I agree. And I think moves us quite nicely onto our next topic, because there needs to be a lot more collaboration. Does that need to be between sectors now? I'd like to talk about generational shared living. And I think we can sort of start this off because Hyber, which is run by Hannah, Hannah Chapat, who effectively has created this marketplace from scratch, working with the HMO sector in particular, consolidating options for students. She's set to work creating a shared generational student living and later living product with Birchgrove, a big later living and retirement living developer. So that is a really interesting concept and the whole premise behind it is that there's a real loneliness problem within certain demographics of students and also of course within the later living sector. Older people feel loneliness of course a lot more than most but equally there is much more of a problem than there ever has been with inclusion for students as well. So This is the kind of thing that is, you know, I saw it and I thought, fair play. You know, that is pretty innovative. And I think that there's been a lot of talk of how you would do that. But it seems like they have two floors in particular within a certain property linked to a medical school, which will effectively mean that postgrad med students are able to live, you know, at a sort of subsidised rent within this later living product. So really interesting thing to see. What are your thoughts on that sort of shared living between generations.

SPEAKER_01: 10:42

I think it's great and I think that when you look around europe and probably other parts of the world it's already a lot is happening in this area and we always seem to be on the back foot and whether that is our regulations whether that's just our lack of wanting to to move things forward i don't know but i think the more that we can do that the better the one thing that kind of when i when i read the article and got the end of article it kind of said it's only for this year and that's a real shame that actually it's already and and maybe that if it's successful it'll continue but it just felt a shame that actually there's already a stop on this already and if If it is successful and it is working, that decision has already been made and hopefully that might change. But I just think there's loads of scope to change and move things and change the way things are always done. And this is a great step forward.

SPEAKER_02: 11:30

I think with co-living as well, I've done work with a few BTR and co-living providers now who are either looking to get into the student accommodation industry or just wanting to understand what their options are. And they're already within the student accommodation industry. So it's, you know, that sort of bridge between BTR, co-living and student is quite obvious. And that's why I think what I didn't want this to be was a PR exercise. I know that Hyber have just raised a lot of money. They're obviously working out where to deploy that, but it didn't feel like that. And actually having spoke to Hannah a couple of times, I think she's very considered in what she'll be deploying that capital to do. So I think this is something I would like to see extended. I think it makes sense in terms of it being you know med school students going into later living i think there'll definitely be learnings that they can they can take and and hopefully there'll be some benefits for residents on both sides i found it really interesting that there should be that that mix and i know we've seen that i know student.com have also done basically a campaign a charity campaign around students going into some of these later living i

SPEAKER_00: 12:35

was involved in that actually when i was at student yeah that was pre-covid and unfortunately it got cut short because of covid but the prayer was a buddying system between students in the student Ruth building, one of them in Sheffield, going round the corner to a care home and to buddy up with some of the residents there. And it was wonderful. And, you know, it was most popular with international students who missed their grandparents and they really missed that kind of family nucleus. So they would go and they would read or they would do knitting or they would just chat or look at the newspaper together. It was really great. It was like, you know, the commitment was like an hour a week or something, but some of them, you know, overstayed their hour. And the idea eventually would have been that some of the social spaces at Student Ruth would have been opened up to kind of reciprocate that and get the residents of the care home to come on the bus and maybe have movie night, you know, movie days and use some of the spaces there. Unfortunately, like I said, COVID cut that short, but it just showed that that there was an appetite for it and it was it was mutual what I would say about kind of using I guess later living and students is we talked about this at the urbanization event I went to a few weeks ago with with loop live and they talked about it there and actually if you can't lease up your later living apartments quick enough having people come in for short-term length leases in between actually solves the problem I wonder if that's where it came from with this birch grow scheme that actually they needed to fill beds and they weren't doing that with the later living segment and what a great opportunity is it to to test a different demographic living together so I think there are benefits and maybe Dini that's why it's short term potentially is that you know they feel more confident and targeting the demographic that they they wanted we got an article sent to us by one of our lovely listeners Jake and he read an article that he thought that would be interesting to us on a blog called reasons to be cheerful. And it was about a senior home that became a successful microbrewery in Vienna. And what happened is that there was some space that they decided would work perfectly well as a microbrewery. And what that has meant is that the workers from the microbrewery have opened up the space to the residents to enable them to work alongside each other on this project. So even if it's not true co-living, I think there are probably ways to incorporate different generations using the space and you know we've talked loads about how amenity space in btr and student accommodation is underutilized particularly during the daytime let's open it up there are you know older people that would love to to use space like that or even you know my like one of my local area children's like baby groups they go and do it at as a retirement home and it's just fantastic like let's break down the barriers

SPEAKER_01: 15:38

well i think that's the thing isn't it like generally most of our lives you engage and socialize and work with and live with a wide generation of people but we seem to be stuck into this educational mold that when you go to nursery you're with people your age group when you go to school you're with people your age group and when you go to university and therefore they've got to live in the same but it's not really a very natural way to live actually and it's that idea that you get so much more benefits in interacting with people out of your age group that we should be looking at more. You know, like my daughter plays in a brass band, which is, you know, she's one of the youngest in it and there's people up to 70, 80. And it gives her loads of benefits of like playing with these wide range of group of adults. And I don't know, we seem to have got stuck in this shared living that it is for this, this is for this age group and this is for this age group. Maybe we need to open up those ideas a bit more, because it isn't, when you get into the world of work, you'll be working with all sorts of people of all sorts of ages.

SPEAKER_02: 16:34

Is that primarily a UK thing, though? Because I think in Europe, they're much more akin to the sort of apartment style living where you could just be living with absolutely anyone. And I've seen a few of those, yeah, those initiatives that Hannah and Haiba and Birchgrove have launched. Do you think it's primarily the UK where there's that sort of siloed and between cradle and grave, as it were? So that's a bit of a crass way of talking about it. But

SPEAKER_01: 16:57

yeah, probably. And dare I say, Is it part of our regulations and planning laws and all of those things that need to be looked at that we've spoken about previously? But it is restricting us in the wrong ways.

SPEAKER_00: 17:09

I highly recommend Reba's book called Radical Housing. And that's got lots of examples of Europe, of this generational living. So like you just alluded to, Dan, I think it probably is something that we're a little bit behind. But also, I do wonder if marketing has a game to play in this because Because if you look at build to rent and co-living, there's no age restrictions on it. And we know anecdotally that around 20% are probably students that are living in those buildings. But there's no upper limit. But are the older generation being marketed to, you know, for them to believe that they can live in this kind of environment? Because otherwise, that segmentation that you're talking about, Deanie, if you've got later living and that's in its own silo, then that could be next to a build to rent or a co-living. And then it makes it feel like, oh, well, this is where you go maybe in your 60s or your 70s or your 80s. But there's no reason why they can't live together. And they are, you know, it's not a predominant demographic in those buildings. But anecdotally, there definitely are people in their later life living in the buildings, but maybe it's just not being marketed enough so they don't know it's available to them.

SPEAKER_02: 18:22

Yeah, it might also be a Because the operations are very different. It's quite unusual to have multiple different brands across different sectors, I suppose, as a real estate operations company. And I think that actually was one of the first things that Paul Bashir asked me to do when I joined Roundhill, create a full strategy for Nido to launch into various different areas. And so I had a look at co-living, had a look at later living, had a look at hostels, hotels, etc. There was a real good sort of opportunity created. to sort of create a brand a little bit like a virgin franchise imagine that whereby you could have your virgin hostels virgin hotels virgin student virgin whatever there was no reason why and there is no reason why you can't do that now with you know with some of the third party operators in particular you know they're moving into the student accommodation operators in particular moving into btr you know what's the next step where where do you stop that why do you need to stop that or can you take someone through the life cycle of their them renting a property in particular where does that stop or does it then pick up again is it that you have you can have your rental properties up until you're 30 odd and then maybe you want your own house and then who knows maybe you pick up again when you're 60 65 70 and you start looking at later living I know there's a bit of a skepticism within the UK in particular at the moment about renting when you're you know renting in later living but I think that will start to dissipate given the housing crisis we've got the cost of living and the I think there's going to be a lot more of a focus on BTR and later living as a rental concept.

SPEAKER_01: 20:00

Yeah, and I think the other thing is, and I think we spoke briefly about this in a previous episode, is that actually as people get older and as, I guess, families get more dissipated, actually grandparents want to go and be with their children and actually go back to city. So that is a perfect way to go and rent in that place because... You can be on hand to help with childcare costs, which we all know is not as cost effective as it should be. It certainly isn't.

SPEAKER_02: 20:27

On to the next topic now, I want to talk a bit about allocations in shared living and student accommodation. Sarah, do you think they need an overhaul?

SPEAKER_00: 20:36

We've done lots of research into this and we keep coming back to the same response from students is that they want more choice allocations. when it comes to who they live with. And we've been round the circles with it. We've spoken with universities, we've spoken with students, we've spoken with operators. The technology is there. We've spent quite a lot of time talking with Coley, who do this particularly in co-living in Europe, and they're breaking into America in the college system there as well. And they do it on a psychometric testing point of view. So it's not just asking, are you an early bird? Do you like studying? Do you smoke? Do you drink? Which is kind of the basic criteria that some operators have at the moment. They literally look deep inside people's innermost thoughts and work out who they would be best to live with. And that's not necessarily people who have the same interests as you. That's not what comes out of psychometric testing. And the outcome is that you put people together that are compatible And they'll be happier for longer with less conflict. I guess the counter argument from universities and actually from some parents we've spoken to is, well, shouldn't we expose young people to conflict and having to resolve things and building up resilience and understanding that you don't always get what you want? But actually, you kind of do. Like generally in life, you do get to choose who you want to live with. OK, maybe you're not your family. But is it a bit weird just to put a load of random and people together and hope for the best.

SPEAKER_02: 22:15

Oh, that is, yeah, it's a tricky one. And look, most property management systems now, they do have a roommate matching service or module or whatever it might be. So it's definitely worth investigating what the options are in terms of how you can automate it based on certain parameters. This is always something that's been pretty manual labor for a general manager because it's then that it comes back to haunt. If they screw up matching people together, by putting a post-grad student next to a lunatic first year who just wants to go out and party, then that's on them. And I think that comes back to what you said, Sarah. At what point can you appreciate that you're building up resilience compared to actually that it's impacting the experience that you want and that you might want to just be out there partying or whatever? It's really, or studying, students have moved on a lot from just partying, but equally, we all know undergrads are And we know what they'll sort of look for, especially in that first term. So it is a really tricky one. It's a fine balancing act. It's specifically on the general manager to manage that as they see fits. And it's also down to, you know, there are certain cultural sensitivities that you really need to be mindful of, in particular, some female Middle Eastern students, but also some female Indian students. They don't necessarily want to be sharing with men. And that can come from the parents, but it can also come from religious upbringing or just general levels of preference. And I think that's where, again, you've got to be really careful setting these parameters that you are making the student and the parent and whoever's footing the bill, you're making them aware that you will try and match them with the most suitable people. but that it's not always that easy. So there has to be a bit of a get out clause, I think, for each general manager or systems team to be able to say, look, we'll try and get it right, but we can't select this perfectly. You're going to have to work with whoever you're living with. And yeah, like you said, build your resilience and sort of, I suppose, come to some kind of natural conflict resolution if there is anything that arises. So yeah, it's a really tricky one though, and not something that I'd I think we've absolutely nailed on the automation front

SPEAKER_01: 24:32

point Dan if it's kind of that helps the resilience and it is part of the process I guess in student when it comes to co-living should it be a different process because actually you're not there for study you're there because you're doing something else and therefore so should we be treating student and co-living differently in that approach

SPEAKER_02: 24:53

yeah I actually I agree with that I think the sort of academic side of student living is vital and should form a large part of that sort of the criteria and the parameters of setting any roommate matching software or placing any allocations. In co-living, yeah, it's totally different. And I think that that's the whole premise behind the name of it. You know, you're living together. You've got to make sure that you are able to get on with people. And that should be technically a lot easier in a co-living space where you're Yes, you might have people getting up early and some people going to bed late, but you won't typically have the either, you know, the deadlines or the work issues around study or the exam time or whatever else it might be that is quite specific to students. So, yeah, I think co-living and BTR in particular, a bit more different. And certainly, you know, those parameters would be a little bit softer than they would need to be in student accommodation, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 25:50

Right. Well, that was a really interesting debate, I think. We might come back to some of those topics. And what was quite interesting is we weren't completely aligned on all of them, which is quite unusual for the three of us, really. So, yes, let's let's see what our audience thinks as well. We'd love to hear some feedback on some of those topics from our listeners. Thank you all for everybody who has listened to us today and tuned in again. We've loved discussing these topics and we look forward to episode eight.