Students Being Better Prepared For Uni Life, Data on Renters and Homelessness - will SFH be the saviour? And shared learnings from all Operational Real Estate sectors

☑️ The Operational Real Estate Festival - Shared learnings
☑️ Youth Forum Highlights: What students wish they were better prepared for, including the impact on student accommodation of being on campus less, what this means for the traditional university model, and should we re-write the rule books?
☑️ Data on Renters: Why is it so hard to come by? Is focusing on first-time buyers even relevant in modern times?
☑️ Homelessness and the Housing Crisis: Can a new government make a dent in what is needed? Are the right homes in the right places going to be built? Will Single Family Housing be the saviour?

Read our latest Youth Forum report: propertymarketingstrategists.co.uk/the-youth-forum

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 back to How's the Shared Living podcast. This is our 20th episode, quite a milestone. We really appreciate you coming back, so thank you very much and please continue to listen. But on with this show. I'm Deanie Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

I'm Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy.

SPEAKER_02: 0:18

And I'm Sarah Canning

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_02: 0:22

Right, so first up, what we've all been up to and we actually all saw each other physically at last week at the Operational Real Estate Festival. How did we all find that?

SPEAKER_00: 0:31

Yeah, it was great. I mean, it's something that we've been involved in as part of the steering committee, as it were. I think we're called board advisors or something like that, Sarah, aren't we? But it's a really good opportunity for anyone in operational real estate to come together and kind of get out of our silos. I think we are... often at these events where it's either a student housing event or a co-living event or a BTR event. And actually, Operational Real Estate Festival just allows us all to get together with people from BTR, co-living, hospitality and hotels and various other sort of operational real estate sectors. And it was really good. It's a relatively small and intimate event, but lots of investors, developers, operators and a few suppliers here and there into those industries, all held at the Pullman Hotel just near Kings Cross And yeah, organized really well by Andrew and Sarah Sangster and had a great time, learned a lot as well. I think we were, Sarah and Dini, you were both moderating panels. I was on a panel on the ESG panel, which was great. How did you both find it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:34

I think as moderators go, we're quite often asked to moderate events. And actually, I don't know about you, Dini, but this was actually a little bit more challenging because it was quite out of my comfort zone. It was a subject that I actually had to put a lot of research into quite a lot of preparation and spend quite a lot of time with the panelists talking through kind of their angles on it my panel was was really about looking at how to i guess maximize return maximize space and kind of branch out of kind of single use operational real estate really so it was kind of kicked off by talking about how hotels have done this well, as it turns out for like thousands and thousands of years, that they're never just about bed nights. You know, they're about F&B, they're about co-working, they're about leisure, they're about spas. They look at all of the space within the hotel and how they can use it and how they can maximise revenue, which PBSA doesn't, do and you know btr co-living etc do very little of so then we were talking about later living merging with student accommodation we were talking about why pbsa doesn't open its space up during the day when students are generally not there the challenges with short-term let summer let so all of these things that are actually quite challenging for certain sectors but it's felt like from the feedback and from the panel and from the questions that we had that actually everyone was really interested in it and they felt like there was a real kind of inspiration for actually oh hold on a minute like we should learn from these other operational real estate sectors and maybe there are other ways of doing things so from a self-centered point of view I actually found my own panel really interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 3:12

No I think your panel was very interesting Sarah and very well moderated but no I totally agree and I think I'm sure we've said this before that I think that we don't get out of our silos enough and I think there is so much to learn from the wider real estate sector that we should be more often encouraging people from different sectors to go to different things and see what's going on and see what you can learn. My panel was on the experience economy, which kind of our pre-reading was an article that was actually written in the 1990s. So it kind of shows how far or how little I guess we are moving on this experience economy train. But it was really interesting to hear from people from kind of the residential sector, build to sell, as well as build rent and kind of that student place and where we are and their different viewpoints on it. And it's like all things, you've got to get outside your comfort zones and see what other people are doing to really open your horizons and see what's happening. And there probably is more that we as a sector can do around experience and that has to be funded, that has to be invested in. And I think ultimately, which we've spoken again about before, it's about educating investors in that it's not a cost, it's an investment and investing in people creates an experience, which creates memories, which creates that stickiness to your product and your service and what you're offering. And so much of that we talk about a lot, but I guess there's more that we can be doing around that. And I think it was great to be part of that wider sector and that wider viewpoint.

SPEAKER_01: 4:41

Your panel, Dini, reminded me quite a lot of one that we heard at UK Reef, actually, which was very much about the experience, but having to segment and look at that particular moment in time of who's in your building and what experiences they'll benefit from rather than this kind of well we always do this we always do pizza parties we always do a Halloween party we always do Chinese New Year and I think that when you actually kind of break down who's in your building, who your future customers are. I think that's where innovation can really come into its own, which is very, very hard to do, as you pointed out, with lack of resource, lack of operational budget, lack of expertise, because in a lot of these operational real estate sectors, you haven't got experts curating the experience. It's an add-on to an already very, very busy operational role.

SPEAKER_00: 5:32

They're creating communities. I do still feel that we often overlook our GMs. Now, Now I know a lot of operators do have really good recognition schemes and award schemes, but I think possibly from an investor standpoint, there's a bit of a lack of understanding as to how important general managers, property teams are to the success of a building. And there are plenty of examples. And I'm sure that every operator can think of one where you might not have the best building And so therefore you might not expect that you would have a good rebooker rate, but you've got a brilliant team in place. And therefore, you know, they're going to be on it. They're going to have a high rebooker rate. They've created that community. Those general managers and property teams that acts like that and do create that sense of community for a student or a resident, depending on which sector it is. They're gold dust. There needs to be a real focus on quite how important those teams are, who they are. Now, it's difficult for operators to then say to an investor, hey, we've got this fantastic property team because every operator is always worried that each of their general managers is going to move on to somewhere different. So making sure that we have that focus on creating that sense of community is absolutely key. My session was in the breakout room, shall we say, on ESG at Operational Real Estate Festival. And it was on at the same time as Richard Ward from Stu Rents. So I know who I'd rather see. But thankfully, it was, you know, almost standing room only. It was very well attended. And I took that opportunity to talk about the carrot and stick when it comes to ESG. I'm so done with any kind of like, what does the S mean in ESG kind of sessions? Or, you know, what does ESG mean to PBSA? We should all know a lot of these things by now. So yeah, I just talked to about the carrot and stick approach and you know that it's time that everybody actually proactively managed their ESG and reported on their ESG and had a few questions at the end which were like when should I start reporting on my ESG and that's certainly not me you know belittling anyone asking questions about ESG because I really want to actively encourage that but you know, the answer is obvious. It's now. Whatever your results are, just report on where you're up to and your performance right now. It was a really good session and I got lots from it as well as I hope the audience as well. So we'll definitely be going again next year. I would like to see more people from PBSA there for sure, but also BTR. I think they were slightly underrepresented. Quite a few from later living. I was very impressed with Honor from Birch Grove, the CEO of Birch Grove. She was fantastic. Hannah from Hiber was also on on one of the panels too. It was just a really good, well thought out event. So yeah, it would be good to see more people from the shared living sectors there next year. And we'll keep everyone posted on that as we go.

SPEAKER_02: 8:16

Absolutely agree. I think it was a great event and I think it's definitely one that should go in the calendar. And I think, you know, we're always encouraging people who wouldn't normally go to these events to encourage their staff to go to events. And I think this is one that is really good to kind of just get a wider view of the sector and what's going on. So I'm sure it'll be in our calendars next year. So thanks everyone for that update. So I think a few weeks ago, we talked about the latest youth forum that we had been working on about what students wished they'd known before they went off to university. We released that last week. So we thought we might have a brief little chat about what we discovered in that report. And It was quite fascinating, really. And I think we learned a lot from it, which is always a bonus when it kind of challenges our expectations. So Sarah, what are your findings from our recent report?

SPEAKER_01: 9:06

I guess a bit of background into the Youth Forum is we do a survey to a diverse range of students across the UK. And then we look at those results from that survey. And we then do a focus group that kind of inspired by the results of that survey to give us a real deep dive and to kind of challenge some of the some of the results from the survey. So we had over 300 students that responded to it. And I think the things that were surprising to me was really about, I guess, the university structure, which we've always said, you know, it impacts accommodation so much. So the things that really stood out is 49% of respondents said the number of hours they were required to be on campus in their first year was less than expected. And we are seeing this across the board that kind of since COVID, a But clearly the students aren't really expecting this and it would impact maybe their choice of accommodation. It might impact their ability to work or not work if they're not actually understanding how often or how long they have to be on campus. And this kind of went hand in hand with the number of hours they were required to self-study. So whilst they weren't expected to be on campus in kind of organised lectures and seminars, there is a high expectation that they have to self-study. and 49% said that that was higher than expected as well. So I guess when they're putting all of that decision-making together about kind of their wider lifestyle and what they can fit in and what they can't fit in, that again is really, really important because whilst they might not need to be on campus, they need to factor in time, alone time, quiet time to be able to self-study. And that brings with it somewhere to be able to study in their accommodation, great Wi-Fi, access potentially to a library if that's a more conducive space for them studying or a co-working space. So I think that self-study and in other focus groups that we've done for clients as well, that self-study thing is very much about a lone study. What we're seeing is that there's not very much demand on students for group study. So again, that feeds into the layout and that kind of feeds into other research that we've done at the Property Marketing Strategist, really, that it's about a lone self-study and they need an environment to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 11:25

It's really interesting because when I was at NIDO, we surveyed the students and we found out they were doing a lot more group study than we were expecting. And it might be that, you know, the universities they were at or quarters they were on, but as a result, we opened up everything. We got co-working benches in and it kind of brought everyone together and we could see them all using them, doing group study, bringing people in from other places, just their course mates, which was obviously a great opportunity for us to push Nido to them as well. So do we think that that's kind of switching around a bit more now and that the focus is more on that self-study piece, as you said, and slightly less on the group work? But what does that mean for the social spaces? Does that mean that we should be breaking them out more and we should have co-working benches still or and then we just have breakout rooms for group study? What's the feedback that you've had?

SPEAKER_02: 12:13

We need to understand more about whether that university structure is really changing because if people are going into university less they're then connecting with less people and therefore that group study has an impact because they don't know as many people to go and group study. I think one of the things that came from the focus group that we did was it's a much greater connection with those on your university course than there is that those you're actually living with but if you've got less opportunity to go and engage with those people in your university course then you've got less chance to to make those connections so I think then and again it's about collaboration it's like we need to work with universities to understand actually is your learning structure changing is your timetabling changing how do we support that and be should should it be changing you know I think the fact that we found that people were expecting to be on campus for longer does that mean actually that They wanna be on campus longer and they kind of want to be part of the whole thing that goes on from being on campus nine till five. But that said, obviously they are also working a lot and it's juggling that ability to study and be on campus when you need to be and also fit working. 72% of them didn't understand enough about household bills before they went, which is a big chunk of them not understanding actually what they need to do. And the other one that kind of really shocked me because I think that we believe that everyone knows that they need to work and they have to work and that's just the cost of it. But we found that 18% hadn't planned to work but found that they had to. So that's quite a big chunk of people that had gone to university thinking this is going to be all right and then realised, no, it's not going to be all right and I need to actually go away and work, which obviously changes your whole expectation of what you went off to study to do because then you've got another layer of something else coming in. The other one from the focus group that has always stuck in my mind is that one of our respondents was saying that The university do give out great information on kind of how to budget and do all those things. But also they're encouraging you to join clubs and societies, which all come with a cost. But once you add up all those costs, they just don't have enough money to do all that stuff. It's like everything. I don't think we've necessarily kept up to date with how that society has changed and how that experience has changed. So we kind of pump out all the old information that we've been pumping out for the last five, 10 years with a few tweaks here, a few tweaks there. But probably it needs a complete overhaul and a complete looking at it to say, actually, this is really what you should expect from your life. And this is what you need to plan for. And this is what you need to expect.

SPEAKER_01: 14:42

The students also said that whilst they were given information about budgeting, they want more detail. So they were saying, you know, they'll get information about the average shop. Well, they were like, well, what is the average shop? What are students buying? And where are they buying it? Which is the cheapest supermarket? And how far away from uni is it? Can I get to it? So they kind of, They've got kind of all the information at their fingertips, but kind of not quite. And it's kind of it's very, very kind of disjointed, really. It was 30 percent said that they don't know how to do laundry. And I know firsthand from doing checking weekends and working on site that that's absolutely true. And again, in student accommodation buildings, we just go, here's the laundry and here's the app. They don't know what washing liquid to use, how much to put in, how often to wash things. I mean, I know I quite often joke about it, but I really worry that students aren't washing their bedding and their towels enough. But maybe that's just because they don't know how to do it. But also, is that cost factored in when people are talking about laundry? one wash a week well one wash a week is probably your clothes that doesn't take into account your bedding your linen your towels and sportswear and it's that kind of laser focus on budget that they really want because I think they're quite woolly numbers really and they're potentially like Dina said not moving on with the times really and how often are they reviewed rather than just kind of put out on a you know year-on-year basis so you know this is the budget for a student actually it changes every year. I think someone made the point

SPEAKER_02: 16:16

on your social Sarah about like should we really be spoon-feeding young people like should is it is it our job as a sector to be doing that but perhaps there's another angle here that we do talk about parents a lot and everyone talks about the role of parents in choosing accommodation and I'm I'm on the fence really at about how influential that is. I think that largely students probably make the choice with a, yes, I support that from parents, not the other way round. Everyone talks about the role of parents, but actually maybe that is the role that actually we should be sending out information to parents to say, this is what you need to make sure that your child is prepared for

SPEAKER_00: 16:51

when they go away. I just don't think you could over-communicate in this situation. Why wouldn't you provide a student or parents or guardian or whoever with as much information as possible obviously in a succinct form so that it's you know really quite clear and gets to the point but I would want to know that the money that I've got saved up for university is going to last me and I'm not forced into an emergency job or you know like a lot of Nigerian students we've seen this year that the currency's crashed 60 percent since June has lost 60 percent of its value and therefore virtually all of them have had to get jobs unless they're in a very privileged position or they've had to leave and that's that's a that's a real issue but But I do see that a lot of operators are starting to help with that in terms of simplifying the costs Grayson's who are a client just to put that out there are doing free laundry now you know in all of their properties and that makes a massive difference because it does add up and students will sort of you know put off washing because they cannot afford it they can't afford to do two washes a week so darks and the lights or they'll chuck all their stuff together and end up with pink clothes or whatever it might be it's you know and then you look at uni homes for example whereby they're aggregating all of the utility bills so that you know even if you're in an HMO exactly how much you're be paying on your broadband on your utilities on gas electricity whatever else it might be your council tax everything is rolled into one simple payment of course in pbsa we've been doing that for absolutely years but i think we're finding ways to simplify life for students but i still don't think it's clear enough from universities in particular as to the cost of living in that particular location and shock horror there's a way to commercialize some of that information for example getting your local supermarket to sponsor some kind of consumer insights piece showing what students are buying and how much that costs them and what the average student buys each week so that everyone can start factoring that in i think you know there is a case of treating students like adults and making sure that we're not just spoon feeding them but equally I just don't think you can over-communicate in this situation. It's much better to have all the information, to sift through it and say, now that's crap, I don't need any of that, than actually be really short at the end of the day when you get to university and think, hang on a minute, wasn't expecting a kebab to be 10 quid. So I think there's a lot more that can be done there in that space for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 19:19

I think the other thing to remember is not all students are made equally and different students come with different budgets, different challenges, different things going on. So therefore, that over information means that you're going to get the right information to the right people at the right time.

SPEAKER_01: 19:32

I think one thing I just wanted to loop back to, but I think we'll probably come back to it in another podcast, is that whole kind of res life, student experience, talking about societies, you know, is that dying off, you know, with the cost of them? And if students don't need to be on campus, and if they're actually working, when do they have time or the money to join these societies? And we've seen through our university clients that there is much less participation in them. And then the students don't get value, the ones that are paying for, because they might have paid for a netball society, but they turn up and nobody's there for training. And then that kind of, you know, dies off. So I think things are changing and maybe that whole structure needs to have another look.

SPEAKER_00: 20:13

Obviously, with the funding crisis at UK universities as well, I would have thought that, you know, sort of looping it back round again to the group work versus individual study piece, I would have thought that there would be more individual study. I would have thought that ultimately you know there are probably going to have to be less lecturers on campus because of the fact that universities won't be able to afford them unless labor come in and completely rip up the tuition fees or the support that they give universities and and totally change the rule book there i just would have thought that there would be less interaction yeah with with your lecturers but also probably less time on campus so maybe things are going to be changing even more beyond where we are now. What are you thinking about that? Is the current funding crisis going to be impacting universities so significantly that students can't or won't go to campus as much?

SPEAKER_01: 21:07

I think you need to look at value for money. We've talked about this before, and I think students during COVID kicked off about it. And I don't think it's changed as much as you might believe it's changed. And I think the hybrid learning was helpful to universities in some respect, because they can attract students that would be commuting. And that's absolutely fine, because actually, if they can access their lectures online, they don't need to be on campus. But there's a massive commercial impact to that. You know, not only like we said, you know, you've got student unions, you've got F&B on campus, that's a commercial impact. But students all the quality and the perceived value for money surely is less if they're not on campus you know we've got some of the most incredible university campuses in this country and it's just a crying shame that people might have been accepted to an amazing university but not utilize all of those brilliant facilities and part of it is probably you know cost related but also time related you know again they're working so are they really going to be using the gym in the evening are they going to be going to the student union we'll discuss in this at the UCAS roundtable last week that you know we often harp back to you know the good old days but actually do we just need a complete kind of rethink of what actually this looks like now and a lot of people are like oh my god students have to work now and it's like let's stop talking about that as shock information it's it's happening and it's going to carry on happening so let's just reset and say that's the norm that's what students do they have part-time jobs and maybe students being full-time on campus maybe that is becoming outdated like Dini said we you know everybody that works in in PBSA needs to be liaising with their universities to actually find out what that looks like because all the data in the world will say there's this many students there's this much intake there's this many applications none of that data says how many are choosing to work from home or how many of those courses are hybrid or how many of those courses are purely online you have to ask those questions it's not going to be in writing anywhere and that's actually, if you're looking at, you know, developing a new student accommodation block in a city, they're the questions that you should be asking, because like I said, the numbers might say we're growing. but what kind of students are they? Because if they're not on campus, then they're of little use to PBSA developers.

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

Yeah, I totally agree. Every bit of crystal ball gazing that I'm reading about the university higher education sector in the UK is talking more about, I mean, obviously about belt tightening and the fact that universities firstly have to get their houses in order and make sure that they are running as lean as they possibly can without diminishing rankings and student welfare and results etc but i do see that there is going to be more of a focus on online learning and i think that's pretty obvious from from everything that we're seeing i'm not sure that that really stretches as far as the Russell Group, even though they are obviously the universities that can use the prestige of having the Russell Group attached to any kind of online degree or whatever. But I do think that some of the tier two universities could end up pioneering that space. I don't think anyone's really nailed that to date. And obviously, that will have an impact too. So I think there needs to be a little bit more coordination between PBSA operators and universities to fully understand what their targets are, what their strategies are, and ultimately make sure that the students are at the forefront of that. Actually, the universities need to be thinking about that as well as balancing the books but then yeah the fallout to pbsa may well then be that there are less students in the mix that is a possibility but i do think we need to spend a bit of time crystal ball gazing on the future of higher education and the future of pbsa as well

SPEAKER_02: 25:01

agreed and i think there's there's probably lots more we can have on this conversation and i just want to make the point that we have talked about a new labour government in that when this podcast goes out we probably will maybe not know where we are with the new government, but it will be the day after the election. So we'll see what happens with that. But I think there is, you know, there's a lot of problems there and a lot of changes that need to happen. But we kind of went a little bit off topic. But if you do want to read our new youth forum, then you can find it in all the usual places. So please do go and download that because I think you might be surprised with some of the findings in that. We did, I think a couple of weeks ago, we talked a bit around kind of why renting is a dirty word. And I know on the back of that, Sarah you I don't know if you stumbled across some research but you found some research and yeah really just wanted to go back to that just give a bit of an update on what we've discovered around that.

SPEAKER_01: 25:52

I've seen so much data about buying first-time buyers help to buy what the government might be doing and I just kind of I started to research really into what does that mean for renters and it's really really difficult to find the equivalent data for renters so I saw data a from Zoopla, which is part of Houseful, discussing the earnings required to buy, which shows 60,000 is the average household income of a first time buyer with a 20% deposit and a 3.3 times loan to value income mortgage. And this varies across the country. So I kind of went back to Zoopla and said, but what about renters? And they pointed me to kind of the right information. And really, it's not a specific side of like to a bid, but it's a heat map that shows the percentage of homes for sale, where the Mortgage costs are lower than rents. Most of Scotland and the north of England show that 40% of homes are in this bracket, whereas in the south and the Midlands, it's less than 30%, with a few coastal areas in the 30% to 35% range. So the average UK salary in 2023 was£35,464, according to Forbes from ONS. So if you double this to get a couple's salary or cohabitor's salary, it's£70,928 which is£5,911 per month, but that's gross. So you kind of then start looking at actually how much rent is needed from somebody's salary. And that's based on two people living together, remember. So in the last two years in England, there's been an increase of 5.2% loan versus 14.6% rent increase. So that kind of shows that actually renting is becoming more and more unaffordable. So whilst we keep talking about how much money is needed for first-time buyers and first-time buyer homes, that is becoming even further out of reach. But so is rent. So I think, you know, as Dini said, we're going to be looking at a new government potentially by the time this podcast goes out. And I know that Labour have been all over house building this week in the press. And that's brilliant. But I do question house building is a very, very broad topic. What houses are going to be built and for who? And there's lots of different products for lots of different people. And just building houses is not going to solve this housing crisis.

SPEAKER_00: 28:24

And where are you going to build them as well? And I think there needs to be... We know that Labour are going to focus on the help to buy or at least helping first-time buyers. But they're almost going to need to help renters out as well. You cannot have these... the discrepancy between the cost to rent and the cost to buy growing exponentially. I think we've got to make sure that we are supporting renters as well. Renting is a vital step on the ladder to purchasing your own property, but equally, it is an opportunity to live in a home outright anyway. Yes, you may not own it, but it's it is becoming more and more important. And I do think that we are overlooking the importance of renting, focusing on those first-time buyers in particular. So yeah, I would like to see some more focus on that from the next government.

SPEAKER_02: 29:17

There was a programme on Channel 4 last night called Skint Britain, which kind of talked about very much where we are as a country financially, what the challenges are, and how we need to get out of this scenario. And it went into several things, including that we need to increase productivity, but also talked about house building. It's focused on looking at the data, and they showed the data of where house building was post-war. This graph was like we had a good bunch of social homes being built, a good bunch of private homes being built, a similar level actually. And then since the 1970s, that's been dropping. And I think visually, when you see this graph, you understand why we are where we are. And actually what this programme is saying is that that has a knock-on effect on everything because when you connect into, you know, the news that's come out this week as well is around that I think it was 80% of students are coming out with over 50%,£50,000 worth of debt. They've then got to be able to get a job to be able to fund that debt, but they can't actually move into the cities where there's good works that pay these salaries to get that job, which means that then they can't be productive and they can't support the economics of our country. So it's just, everything is so interconnected that I just, you know, we do need to build more because we need to produce more because we need to be productive because that pays for how we run our country, you know. And the other thing, I think the other thing that I think part of that research, Sarah, was I think they shared a map of one of the other challenges, which again, this program talks about is the green belt. And actually the reason that house prices are so high in our city centres is because you just can't build anymore because we've got this ring of Greenbelt around it, that there's just no space to build anymore. And I think what they're saying is if you just took, I think it's, if you took, I can't remember what the distance was, but a distance from the kind of commuter stations, you'd only take up two or 3% of the Greenbelt, but that would build us, millions of homes which would enable us to get out of this mess so it's kind of this you know the planning's in connected the university funding's in connected the investment in our infrastructure is connected and we just yeah we just need to invest more in our infrastructure and our service in a house building so we can start to build our way out of this crisis but As we say, we will have a new government when this goes out. Do they have the policies to do it? Do they have the will to do some of those challenging decisions which are challenging and cause problems? Who knows? I mean, I don't have much hope, but maybe you guys are more positive.

SPEAKER_01: 31:58

The other statistic that I saw yesterday, and I can't remember who posted it, so apologies, is that the UK has the highest number of homeless people. It was globally, which I do wonder how homelessness is considered, what that is. But definitely in Europe, it's a statistic that I have heard before. So like Dina, you just said that house building has gone down, but our population has increased. And homelessness has increased. So that's the clear maths around it. What I will say about Greenbelt building is it has to be about infrastructure. I hate seeing these developments popping up in the middle of nowhere because that just creates a reliance on cars. It means that if you haven't got cars, then you've got to have public transport. You've got to be able to get to places of employment. You've got to be able to get children to school. Are there schools there? Then you've got the doctor, the dentist, you know, the station, all of that that has to be built into it. So it's not quite as simple as just building on Greenbelt. It has to work with communities. And I think, you know, we're massive supporters of single family housing. So, you know, purpose-built housing for renters. You know, it's still really, really small scale, but I think they're really making headway into, adding rental homes into existing communities, which is definitely, you know, the way forward. And hopefully that stays at an affordable level for families to be able to, you know, to rent homes, but they've got to be able to have access to the things that are important for families.

SPEAKER_02: 33:34

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, you know, you're right, planning should be about all that infrastructure that comes with it.

SPEAKER_01: 33:39

The other thing, which is a political hot potato, potentially, is that I saw somebody say, well, how are we going to build all these houses because we haven't got the labour in order to build them and you know the big elephant in the room clearly is Brexit so it's this kind of self-fulfilling situation that has caused a labour shortage in people that have the skills and the ability and the appetite to be part of this massive labour force that is, you know, that is needed. And I know that modular offsite can do a lot of that with less labour. And there can be environmental, you know, positives for that as well. But again, you know, is there enough infrastructure and available to be able to even create all of those homes offsite? site? Probably not.

SPEAKER_00: 34:28

The good news is Labour are looking at renegotiating Brexit in some way, shape or form. So there may be some slightly eased restrictions on people living and working in the UK, which will hopefully help the construction sector. But also they are very much looking to rip up the rulebook on planning, apparently. How easy that is to actually do, I don't know. But, you know, a couple of papers have led with that recently on front pages talking about how Labour are going to reform the local authority plan I am yet to see anything concrete as to what that will look like, but that is honestly half the battle right now for any PBSA, BTR, co-living, later living developer right now. We cannot build enough beds because the planning regime is so archaic. So hopefully they do take that on full steam ahead alongside the funding crisis in UK universities and any other, you know, one of a million different issues that they could or should be dealing with immediately. There is only a finite pot of money, though, sadly, but hopefully the will is there and we can at least start to prioritise some of these things anyway.

SPEAKER_02: 35:43

don't know who who the government who's leading the government but you will if you have just caught us you haven't just walked into a political podcast this is a shared housing podcast one thing i must mention a big thank you to our youth forum sponsors the crowd agency and dig in for making that happen we couldn't do it without them and we obviously share that to the sector which we know a lot of you find really useful so many thanks to our sponsors and of course if you do want to get involved with sponsoring house or any of our work then please do give us a shout we'd love to chat to you That's it for this week and we will see you next week when we will actually know who is in number 10. Thanks everyone.