Resident Brand Ambassadors, Strategic Planning and Budgeting and Election Season Insights

This episode features discussions on:

🔹 The role of resident brand ambassadors and wardens – should they be paid? And what does it mean for your opex?
🔹 Strategic planning and budgeting – when and where to start?
🔹 Election season insights – what does it mean for housing and development?

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_00: 0:00

Hi everyone and welcome back to Housed, a shared living podcast. This is episode 16. We have recorded it twice, which you will know from our rushed LinkedIn post last week, so you should expect a very slick production this week and very smooth. First, let's introduce ourselves. I'm Deanie Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_01: 0:22

I'm Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy.

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

And I'm Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategist. So a couple of weeks ago, I think we said we weren't going to talk about what we've been up to, but we've decided that it's good for us to not launch straight into the hard topics. So how's everyone this week and is everyone well? Yeah, I think what was good last week is Dan and I went to the kind of a round table hosted by the lovely people from the Operational Real Estate Festival and Gerald Eve as well. So we've got some insight that are quite relevant to some of the topics that we'll be talking about today. So that was really good. And Dean and I were invited to an away day for one of our clients, which was really, really kind of them to involve us and really, I think it's helped us particularly kind of with their B2B marketing, really kind of immerse ourselves in their world, which is why we were kind of rushing around trying to record podcasts last week and it didn't quite go to plan because we were out of the office.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20

You were on a jolly, basically.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

Well, Dan, if you want to go there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26

Yeah, no, I don't. It's fine. Good. Yeah, the think tank with Operational Real Estate Festival was great. It was really interesting because of the people that were in the room, lots of different investors, developers, operators And of course, the guys from Gerald Eve as well. So yeah, I think the thing that struck me from that was the investor sentiment in particular, and how discouraging that was. To be completely honest, it's not looking particularly good. Everyone was hoping for a pickup later in the year with more portfolios trading, more coming to market, more trades being made. But there doesn't seem to be that much available at the moment. And it seems like it's partly to do with the with seller sentiment. They are holding out for much higher prices than they normally would for assets that may end up being stranded in five, 10 years time. So it feels like there's a real disconnect between acquisition side and the seller side. So yeah, really, really interesting there in particular. I then went on to the Stu Rents Occupancy Summit, which was a really good invite-only event at the Gherkin in London. And it was, again, very interesting group of people in the and a few agency guys as well. And this wasn't just your typical opportunity for students to flog their wares, their PMS and their data and marketplace. It was genuinely a real opportunity to get a bit of thought leadership out there, have some really good panels on tech, on what's going on in PMS world, on what's going on in data and general market updates, and also then another chat around the investor sentiment too. So yeah, really interesting. What came out of that was, you know, it was supposed to be from the investment side of things and PBSA survived to 25. And now everyone's delaying that sentiment beyond into 2027. So apparently it will be heaven in 27. That's the theme. But we'll see how that pans out. But yeah, really, really interesting week. Two really good events.

SPEAKER_00: 3:22

That's great. And sorry, I missed both of them. Both really good events and really good to kind of see where investors are and what they're feeling and understand why we're not seeing those movements, I guess, in the market. One of the topics we wanted to discuss today, which links in, I guess, with kind of that wider strategy it is budget season it's strategy season what are we seeing playing out what are you hearing on the ground what's going on we're seeing really is that we're being approached by lots of clients and potential clients to get started on the next kind of year strategy and budget which is really good because it's earlier than the normal which means people are thinking about it earlier so i think with strategy and budgets particularly from a marketing perspective we are being engaged with by clients and prospective clients to get started now really which is great because it's actually quite quite early in the season and it feels like there's a recognition that the in-house marketing team there's still loads of beds to sell you know it hasn't flown like it would normally and the in-house marketing team can't really quite get their heads out of this year to look forward and to strategize and look at budgets for the next year so I think that's why we're being kind of called in to add extra Yeah, same. I think it is great that people are starting to see that earlier. I know that we had a debate a few weeks ago on our podcast around how early this can be. And I'm still of the mind that I think the earlier you can get into that strategy planning is better than waiting to see where you are in occupancy. And I think the trends are changing. I think we've had three or four or five years where it hasn't been consistent. So I think it's great that people are starting to see that strategy piece is getting really really important because it isn't just we go to take the same thing year on year because we don't know what's going to happen so I think having that thinking time having that ability to see the market and assess the market and work out kind of where you need to be and have time to do that is is really important and it does feel a bit like maybe we're getting into a more mature market that we do see that as something really important to get started early to understand it properly to do it properly instead of just waiting and doing it in a rush, which generally I think has happened in a lot of

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

different places. I know we've talked about this before. I'm a big fan of doing it as early as possible, but I do like visibility over the occupancy before doing it, you know, getting a good idea of roughly where you'll be up to. But it's really difficult in some of these markets where they're typically quite late or they're reliant on international students. You may have 50% occupancy in July, knowing that that extra 50% will come in August and September. So it is still, you I think the difficulty comes when also there are some markets where we push the prices or PBSA operators and investors have pushed the prices so high that actually there will be some fairly volatile markets and some fairly volatile property activity within that. I've seen that firsthand with clients and non-clients and competitors that I've been looking at. And I think that some of the velocity is quite different to previous years. So that's going to be a challenge for setting those budgets as well. But the earlier the you can do it, the better. And what I'm seeing in terms of the investor engagement in particular that I've got, more often than not, they're asking me pretty much from now onwards, we'd like you to take a look at this OPEX. We're starting to lock in the strategy for the next year. So what do you think about this? And that's my primary role is to go in and make sure that the operator is giving an accurate picture of where things are at right now and where they think things will be at with regards to the OPEX as well. That marketing is such a huge part of that though. And it's been a challenge to cut through the marketplace activity within that because every operator has a different amount of marketplace activity. Some of them have 50, 60% of their bookings come through agents and marketplaces, and some of them have just a very small percentage, and they may limit them to domestic students rather than internationals. But that has, again, been very volatile over the last few years in particular. So trying to cut through that, work out what the best strategy is that's going to give the lowest possible cost per acquisition and the highest possible occupancy, that is part of the sort of, I suppose, the secret sauce. It is really tricky to marry that up, especially at a time when you don't know exactly where the occupancy is going to be at. So yeah, lots of early buzz. which is great it's now just about making sure that we're crystal ball gazing well enough and that is the the tricky piece but that's why they pay us the big bucks or at least the bucks anyway

SPEAKER_00: 8:06

i think one thing about budgets which i mean you know not all of our listeners are from from the world of operators and we've got clients that work in the b2b space as well and we've worked with quite a few startups and i think the realization is that when they're putting their marketing budget it together, they're always underestimate A, the budget that's required from a marketing point of view, but also the resource that's needed. And we do find that quite challenging that we work with some great brands and we have worked with some great brands that are looking to launch a product or a service or a brand into the sector. And they're really, really challenged on what they can and can't do, both from a resource point of view and a budget point of view. And it's a real shame that quite often these startups, particularly tech startups, don't have a marketing purpose. and we get involved too late. So I think with any industry, there's this kind of swings and roundabouts thing when it comes to particularly marketing budgets is kind of not knowing the end game and putting some numbers together that may or may not be the right one to achieve what you want to. So yeah, the earlier we can get involved, the absolute better. I think there's probably been a lesson as well because of where demand was last year that everyone probably dropped a lot of their marketing budgets and thought we won't need it. And it just goes to show you why you always need to have a marketing budget. You always need to be consistent and you always need to keep it there. And I think, you know, as I've always worked with clients, we always work with clients is give us a budget. If we don't need it, we're not going to spend it. But you want to be able to know that you can market the rooms that you need to market. And I think that's proving very much this year that where people have reduced their marketing budgets or that people are doing a lot of marketing because they're Demand isn't kind of where they expected it to be based on previous years. So it's an important lesson, I think,

SPEAKER_01: 9:59

for everyone. I agree with that. Marketing. I always feel really sorry for the marketing teams because they're the ones normally going to investors cap in hand saying, oh, we need more marketing and we need more budget for marketing. And that's through no fault of their own, typically. But, you know, how many marketing teams ultimately are giving back money at the end of the year when occupancy, when their revenue and occupancy is high and the rooms have flown out the door? I've never seen a marketing team squander that marketing budget just because we've got it there, so we need to spend it. It's always, though, marketing teams having to go in for extra marketing budget. You don't see the maintenance team typically or the ops team doing that unless it's some kind of CapEx project or whatever it might be. But yeah, it's a difficult time to be a marketeer when you're setting that budget and the occupancy has been a bit up and down, as is the revenue, and you know that you're going to get pushed. You can't just go in and put a 25%, 30% contingency in there because... any good MD is going to come down on that really hard. So yeah, it's a really tricky one to play that. But ultimately, making sure you've got a little bit of contingency, but that your occupancy and revenue forecasts are as accurate as they possibly can be. That's half the battle. Well, that takes an entire team. I do think that's why we've seen more commercial directors and revenue managers being hired by some mid-sized firms in particular. Anyone from kind of 5,000 to 20,000 beds now seems to have some kind of commercial role. And that's where you've got to be able to knit together, you know, what marketing are requesting and making sure that that is going to be linked to revenue and occupancy forecasts and that it's as accurate as you can make it. So yeah, tricky one, that budget setting for marketeers. But, you know, I would always allow enough contingency, but know that if you've got an asset that's struggling, you should be able to flag that you need to spend a bit more money on it.

SPEAKER_00: 11:51

And while we're on budget, I think one thing that we will, Wanted to have a chat about was resident brand ambassadors and wardens and should they be a budget line? Should they be paid for? What's their value? Have you guys got any good examples of where this is working, where it isn't working? What do you think about resident brand ambassadors? I think they need to be paid. And we could stop the conversation there because I know we're all in agreement of that. But, you know, for the purpose of our listeners, we should probably expand a little bit more than that. But I think, you know, students, young people, they have jobs. You know, they may be studying, but most of them have got jobs as well. So why would they put time and effort into working for the place that they live for free. I just think the days have gone where you can just say to somebody, hey, give up five hours of your week to produce some social content or to organise some events or to man the phones and it'll look great on your CV. Thank you very much. You know, you don't get quality from it. They don't take it seriously if you don't take it seriously. And I just think that we need a rethink and, you know, to really value those people that can add value so much to your team while actually working within probably quite a low budget but a budget nonetheless what do you think Dan?

SPEAKER_01: 13:07

Yeah I think there needs to be a differentiation here between a resident warden and a resident ambassador resident warden effectively holds the phone overnight is there for emergencies and you know is normally an international student in my experience that's what I've seen they typically will hold the phone but I'm sure that varies from asset to asset and it's just a way of not having to have a 24-hour security there are some buildings at some Anything less than sort of 100, 150 that, you know, the budget just doesn't stack up to have 24 hour security. So you have a resident warden there. They have to be paid and it should be fair. You know, obviously you've got to be paying minimum wage, but ideally living wage for that area and making sure that the student is doing the required hours, but is fairly paid for that as well. From a brand ambassador point of view, that's an interesting one because yes, it is quite an attractive role sometimes because you're representing the property or the operating brand. You're typically looking to try and do a few social media posts, get people to events. It's an enjoyable job. You're helping to create that sense of community. And I think that previously, maybe a few years ago, operators have relied on that and thought, well, we know they're going to want to put that on their LinkedIn or their CV, and therefore we aren't going to pay for that. That has to stop if it hasn't completely already. So we do need to make sure that we are being really fair with the scope of work that we're giving resident ambassadors and resident wardens, but resident ambassadors in particular, and that they feel fairly compensated for their time rather than just a carrot of, hey, you can stick this on your LinkedIn profile. So yeah, I do think that there is definitely a value for them. And I think looking at Yugo as a really good example, I was speaking to Chris Holloway from Yugo the other day, and he was just explaining that I think it was around 40% of their current staff have lived in a Yugo property at some point. And obviously, Sarah, you'll have experience of this as well, Yugo having come from a student housing company. But I was really interested by that stat, and I can see that there is an opportunity for resident wardens and resident ambassadors to take that step into PBSA or real estate.

SPEAKER_00: 15:20

I think that that's an incredible statistic, and I think that's great. And I think what it needs to be seen as is an investment, not a cost. And I think, you know, we come across it and we advocate all the time to actually pay content creators in your size, because ultimately that's a far more cost effective way of getting great on point contact content from someone living there than going and sending someone from central office into that place to get that content. And I think it's, it's also, I don't think we've spoke before about how we have skeleton staff in PBSA. They're not highly, you know, we don't have lots of, lots of spare people, you know, you know, twiddling their thumbs when it comes to sites. So actually having, whether it's brand ambassadors, whether it's wardens, whether it's content creators or community support, they can really help take on some of those day-to-day jobs for site members that they're currently trying to do whilst trying to do all the other things that they're trying to do. So I think there's a real investment there and I think, you know, it is the old adage that if you don't pay people properly, you don't get great work. So I think it's important that you see it as an investment and if you run it properly, you can get real value out of that And it will add to your brand, it will add to your operational service, it will add to your customer service, it will add to your community. Like Dan said, the example that Yugo are leading the way, when we were the student housing company, which was the predecessor of Yugo, one of the promises was to hire people from within the buildings. And they absolutely stood by that. And actually a couple of residents from buildings ended up doing internships with me in my marketing team and are now trailblazers in the sector. and that's not my story to tell so I'm sure they can tell their own stories but imagine you know that's an investment and what I guess what you know kudos to those people and to the company that they have had such great careers because of the opportunity that they were given but I think think that it should be treated like a proper job there should be job descriptions there should be interviews there should be salaries and the people should have their careers developed and their work properly credited and that's the way to kind of create the next generation of staff and if you do and they are absolute stars and you want to hire them then you don't have any recruitment costs either so actually you could have a ready-made team of people ready to go that probably had no idea that you know real estate property operations was even you know even a thing so yeah I think let's try in our own way of trying to ensure that people that we work with treat those potential students and residents and future workers in the right way.

SPEAKER_01: 18:02

Pay your people properly is half the battle. And you look at not just resident ambassadors or wardens, but GMs or maintenance people or housekeepers or whatever it might be. I think there's actually still a bit of a disconnect. The wages are getting better. We're getting closer to where we should be, I think. But I do think that still needs looking at a bit more benchmarking because I've seen a few GM roles in particular come through recently that are just just too low that's probably a topic for another time.

SPEAKER_00: 18:30

I saw in BTR a community executive role being advertised for£55,000 in London and you kind of think that you know that's why people talk about the community in BTR so much because they've got specific roles and amazing salaries and I know that PDSA just don't have those kind of OPEX budgets to kind of create those roles which is why you have to look a bit creative But, you know, you could hire a community executive in PBSA that's working five hours or 10 hours a week and they could earn a few thousand pounds over the year. can't do the maths that quickly. So I don't know if that's what it works out as. But, you know, we're not talking£50,000 for a full-time role. I think you would get great value out of a few hours for a few thousand a year. I agree. I think that's a great point that actually we've got ready-made organic careers fairs sitting, living in our property. So I think there's a lot to be said for building that legacy and promoting it as an industry and a career option. So that's great. The last topic we wanted to talk about, which feels very old now, but the last time we put out a podcast, we were talking about the election that we assumed was going to be in autumn. That very day that we recorded it was when we found out that actually we are going to have an election. And now it's, what, under four weeks away. But I think we can't have a podcast without talking about it because there's so much that's stagnated because of where we are in politics. So what do we think what's being talked about? What do we think is going to happen? What should we be looking out for in terms of kind of housing planning development, what are we seeing?

SPEAKER_01: 20:12

Absolutely nothing. And to be fair, I'm not entirely surprised that Labour aren't really coming out and saying a lot at the moment. If they play their cards close to their chest, then there's probably a good chance that they will get in. Let's hope so anyway. I'm very much more red than I am blue, as you may be able to tell. But I'm really hopeful that Labour will get in, especially having seen some of the horrendous tremendous faux pas from Rishi Sunak more recently on the election campaign. I think that you won't really see a huge amount in terms of university funding. That's one of the key things that they need to look at. The student funding as well, the maintenance loans, student loans, looking at how fair they are and how to make sure that they're good value ultimately. And then in terms of the housing crisis, yeah, not seeing very much there either. Both talking about building more houses, nothing in manifestos as yet, but we've not seen the full manifestos. So we'll wait with bated breath for that. But yeah, it just, it feels like Rishi Sunak had to call the election because he was hoping that the Mac report would come back with some negativity around international students and it categorically didn't. It was incredibly positive talking about the contribution that international students in particular make to, first of all, the university system in that they're propping up the higher education system in the UK and allowing domestic students to go to university by subsidising those courses. And that economically, they are bringing in over 40 billion into the economy every year. So there was just no escape route for Rishi Sunak there. No last roll of the dice. And I think he just, you know, once he was persuaded out of reducing the graduate route by David Cameron, James Cleverley and Gillian Keegan, I think he just thought, well, I've got nothing left. So I may as well call the election now. Inflation had come down slightly so so yeah absolutely nothing left to to lose really so yeah it'll be interesting to see how this all starts to play out

SPEAKER_00: 22:15

i was gonna say i think the positive of it being so so close i mean we're still seeing some of it is is wait and see you know and and part of that might kind of materialize in what we were talking about earlier about no deals being done and transactions is there is a bit of a wait and see approach at the moment which was there anyway when people thought there was going to be an election in the autumn but at least now it's in the summer it does kind of it might be a catalyst to move things forward and you know you kind of think whichever party gets in which think we know which one it will be they'll they'll want to make an impact quickly like dan said i'm not hearing anything tangible about housing or planning or anything like that. So I don't know that we're going to see that happen anytime soon. The migration thing, I know the Mac report was very positive about it and hopefully that's put it to bed. There's obviously the elephant in the room in the way of the UK Reform Party, who it feels like that came about very timely, kind of, after the Mac report kind of sort of pushed that aside. It's, you know, it's the, you know, the antithesis of kind of what everyone else, kind of what's been proven really. You know, I don't think that will fundamentally make a huge amount of difference to the end result, but.

SPEAKER_01: 23:31

You just never know. I remember being confident that, you know, we wouldn't be so daft enough as to vote for Brexit. And sure enough, that happened. And Farage is just the cockroach that won't die. It's really, it's soul-destroying when you see the level of politics that he is bringing to the UK and you know yet the Conservatives are going to be the ones that struggle with all of this and it looks likely more likely that a Labour victory is on the cards because of that but at the moment we still can't see there's no visibility on those Labour policies either and any kind of lobbying whether it's to the current government the Conservatives or Labour it's fallen on deaf ears I think partly because the Conservatives are incredibly disorganised and I saw that in the conversations that I had with the housing department where the moment that you mentioned the home office, they'd roll their eyes. And there is no one coordinating any of this. We need a university strategy so that we can have sustainable, financially responsible universities and a leading international education sector. We also need to solve the housing crisis in general, but we also need to solve the student housing crisis and make sure that All of our accommodation is fit for purpose. The universities have enough for what their plans are. There is nobody to oversee all of this because realistically that should be a prime minister. It's what you would task with a CEO or an MD. Make sure that you're coordinating each of your departments. That just does not happen and it has not happened. And so I think because of the amount of coordination and the amount of silos that we have in government, I can't see any major policy being passed anytime soon. And by that, I mean, how do you solve the university funding crisis? Realistically, you're going to need to either fund universities or you're going to need to put up the tuition fees, neither of which will be popular amongst the electorate. And therefore, that's going to probably be something that you have to do straight after an election. There's no way Labour will do that after this election, I don't think. So that would have to be after the next election. But who knows where we'll be by then. It's just a really tricky one. All of these... There are so many solutions here to the university funding crisis and to the housing crisis, but politics just gets in the way.

SPEAKER_00: 25:52

I think the other thing is that there's so many other priorities that, of course, in our sector, we definitely need a reform of higher education. We need reform of housing. We need reform of planning. But we also need reform of all education. We also need NHSs on its knees. So I think it's just there's so much for any income in government to go at that it is kind of wed you start it's impossible to start but I guess the one thing is that we're going to have time because no one's going to make any quick decisions is are we as a sector in the right position now to be lobbying to get those points of view to kind of make sure that the things that when those decisions are made they're dealing with the right information and we've given them that right information are we in the right position to do that right now?

SPEAKER_01: 26:36

I don't think we are I don't think universities are in the right shape at all I think we have this sort of two stroke three tier university system at the moment and there's a flight to quality so Russell Group taking priority over any of the tier two or tier three universities and yeah that is a a real issue for us as a sector i just can't see that anybody is going to any anybody is going to be able to reform anything anytime soon

SPEAKER_00: 27:02

isn't that something to look forward to but we all want change but we don't think change is coming anytime soon so

SPEAKER_01: 27:10

yeah but when you know it the difficulty is that yes universities are too fat at the moment and by that i mean too many staff too many courses that are slightly frivolous with questionable graduate outcomes. But realistically, that is still the minority. I think that what you need and what You cannot currently defend universities at the moment in terms of the way that they're run in a lot of places. And I think that part of that is because of the fact that universities are typically run by academics. They're not run by people from the private sector or people who have a commercial business background for the most part. There are some that are, and some are run extremely well. They're very lean. And I think... People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. So what we need to do right now as a sector within higher education is batten down the hatches, tighten the belts, use whatever metaphor you want, But slim down the budgets and make sure that we are working in the interests of the students and of the economy. And I think there's a lot of universities out there who have been surviving for survival's sake. And it wouldn't surprise me if there was some form of consolidation at some point with a particular university merging with another one. I don't think any university will be left to go pop. I'd be very, very surprised if that was the case. But yeah, I do think that there is an opportunity here to slim down the budgets. down the higher education sector slightly not drastically this isn't it doesn't need to be root and branch reform or change it just needs to be making sure that ultimately that the higher education sector is as lean as possible and providing extremely beneficial graduate outcomes to both domestic and international students so that is the opportunity that everyone in higher education has and then pbsa and the rest of you know the real estate sector can fit in around that but that's just where i think it needs to get to right now so that we can then talk about the strategy to move it forward

SPEAKER_00: 29:12

so i think there's lots of room for reform across all those different areas but we're not expecting anything to happen quick spot is the general consensus there so the good thing is i'm sure we'll come back to this discussion and we'll discuss it lots over the months and years to come and hopefully we'll start to see change because i know we will need it but don't hold your breath is the general The general ask. So I think that probably concludes our episode today. We enjoyed it a second time round because we've obviously had this conversation once already. So I hope you enjoy it the first time round. And I hope it was slicker than the first time round, but who knows? You'll never know. So we shall see what happens. But thanks ever for listening. We'll probably be back on the airwaves very quick because we're going to try and do a double episode this week. So you will hear our lovely voices again. Thanks ever so much for joining in. Please continue to like, subscribe, engage. Let us know what you want to hear more of or less of. And let us know what you think. And we look forward to seeing you again soon.