Hannah Chappatte from Hybr on Fundraising, Female Founders and Innovating the Student Accommodation Sector

We're excited to kick off our special summer sessions with an insightful conversation featuring Hannah Chappatte, CEO and founder of Hybr.

Here's what we cover in this episode:

☑️ Female Entrepreneurship: Exploring the unique challenges and triumphs faced by women in the industry.
☑️ The Future of the Sector: Insights into emerging trends and what lies ahead.
☑️ Raising Funds: Strategies and tips for securing investment in a competitive market.
☑️ Innovation and Evolution: How Hybr, a rental platform tailored for students and young graduates, is transforming the rental experience. Hybr provides a seamless journey for young renters and connects landlords with a pre-qualified renter base, ensuring faster lease-ups and increased NOI.

Check out Hannah's great work here: Hybr | Homes for Students
Connect with Hannah here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-chappatte-20029b1140?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_contact_details%3BCG0aPijWSdK5tFCyrZ48HA%3D%3D

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_01: 0:00

Hello and welcome to this very special episode of How's the Shared Living podcast, The Summer Sessions. This is a little mini series of special episodes that we've put together with what we know are very interesting people and guests across the sector to keep you accompanied over the summer months. So you may very well be listening on your holiday or driving your kids to childcare settings or maybe you're just on your usual commute but we're glad that you are joining us and we're glad we've got lots of special guests to feast your ears over the summer break. I'm Deanie Lee from the Property Marketing Strategist.

SPEAKER_03: 0:37

I'm Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy.

SPEAKER_00: 0:39

I'm Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategist. And this is

SPEAKER_01: 0:42

House, the shared living podcast, the summer series. So welcome. So we're really, really delighted to have a very special guest with us today. Someone who no doubt you've all heard of is a real trailblazer in the sector, in the student accommodation space. So very big welcome to Hannah. Thank

SPEAKER_02: 1:00

you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02

No, it's great to have you here. And as you say, we're a big follower of you since you came into the space. You're a real trailblazer. You're always so engaging when we hear your conferences and speak to you. So we are just super delighted to have you here. And I know that we're going to learn a lot from you over the next 30 minutes or so. So a big, big welcome. We wanted to just really maybe just hear a little bit about you, kind of where you're from for those that don't know who you are.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29

Yeah definitely so I'm the founder and CEO of Hyber. Hyber is a rental platform tailor-made for students and young graduates so we match groups of young renters to qualified housing to optimise for a happy tenancy and I started the business in Bristol back at kind of after I graduated from university beginning of 2020 and I've been a great journey since then.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52

So what is the initial reason you set up Hyber and what was the driving force to do that really?

SPEAKER_02: 1:58

So a big issue is you know they have three million students that study in the uk every year and just under two million will rent privately and every year they go through the same ordeal of they don't know where to go to find the right house they don't know who they can trust and they're drowning in jargon around deposits guarantors tenancy agreements and have no idea what any of it means and it's incredibly anxiety inducing not even to mention that you arrive in campus in september and within a few weeks You have to find your lifelong chosen best friends to live with and find a place to live. So it's an incredibly stressful experience. And there wasn't a platform that was really addressing those pain points head on and building that supportive platform to handhold students to find the right housing so they can focus on their university experience, which is what's most important.

SPEAKER_03: 2:51

It's been, as Dini said, it's been great to see your rise through the industry. And from my perspective, I'm seen as something of a marketplace specialist, I think, because I've worked with 10 of them now. And it's always anxiety inducing for me when I get a phone call from a new marketplace or someone looking to create one saying, what do you think? I'm looking to do something supposedly different. And the refreshing thing about you and the approach that you've taken is that that is what you're doing. And it is something that is refreshing. It is different. And I think focusing on the HMO sector as well is a smart move because it's unregulated It is fragmented. And it is really difficult for students to find the right properties for them. And then you've got all the issues with bills. And it's enough of a hassle just to find those people to live with and then find a place to live. So yeah, I think congratulations on what you've done so far. There's not going to be too many pats on the backs here. We do want to understand exactly where you've got to. But is the initial reason that you set up Hyber still that sort of driving force for what takes you forward? Or are you seeing that you might have to pivot in certain places?

SPEAKER_02: 4:02

Yeah, I mean, so the real reason I started Hyber came from that student pain point because that's where I really lived and I understood. And so after I started, when I was starting the business, I really needed to understand the supply side. So that's the landlords, the agents that we work with. And I need to understand their pain points. And really to summarize that it was that landlords and agents are drowning in inquiries. If you post on a listing on Rightmove, you're going to get about 40 inquiries per listing. And so if you have a hundred plus listings, you can imagine it's completely impossible to manage. And so that kind of leads into pain point number two, which is that lettings is incredibly inefficient. Lettings really means phones ringing off the hook, inboxes full of emails, lots of questions back and forth with tenants. And it gives the tenants a really bad experience because the rental agents are never going to be able to get back to them. And a lot of data, they manually input it over and over again, which leads to a lot of human error. And then you have the whole issues about when to write to rent checks, etc. So these kind of messy, inefficient processes really slows down the industry. And if you lose out on that kind of peak season when you need to let, you end up with voids and you should not be having voids in a housing crisis. So these are the kind of pain points that we've been really kind of understanding and deep diving into over the last few years. And that's what we're really directly trying to address with Hyber is to create a platform, a product that streamlines that lettings process. If you look at the kind of prop tech environment, everyone's focusing on property management systems and that's everything in the moment of a tenancy agreement until the offer stage. And everyone's kind of building technology to improve the way that portfolios are managed. But everyone's neglected the pre-tenancy process, everything from listing to marketing to viewings to offers. And that's the place where we're really putting our time to build a unique product to market. And Dan, just to touch on the point you mentioned around the HMO space. Exactly. It's like doubling down on our niche, which is student market is we understand that students on average come with three or for friends. So our whole kind of product experience from the search functionality until the offer stage on both sides of the marketplace is optimizing for that group booking experience set up to cater for groups, which helps both the sheen experience and also to allow the agent to rent those larger properties or those cluster flats.

SPEAKER_03: 6:34

Brilliant. And just give us an idea of how it's going because, you know, we've seen in the news about fundraisers, et cetera. How are you finding it?

SPEAKER_02: 6:42

Yeah, so it started off as kind of a one-man band for the first two years, bootstrapped, got to profitability, revenue generating, really understanding the pain points from the HMO landlord perspective, mostly focusing on Bristol and then a few other kind of regional cities. and then decided to raise our first kind of pre-seed round to invest more into the team and then raise our seed round to invest more into the technology of, okay, how do we unlock that next level of growth by providing a really sticky solution that the supply side of the marketplace can use every day to really improve their team efficiency. What we do is all about focusing on the student experience. We have to deliver something that frees up the landlord and agent's time so they can put more of their team resource towards property management and delivering a really great renter experience but yeah to answer your question it's definitely there's ups and downs it's a startup journey yeah we're really really focused on the profitability and nailing the kind of key core markets that we're in before then raising our next round and really scaling quickly across the uk

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

Hannah, I'm keen to understand how you scale the business because I think so much of HYBR is about you and your passion and your experiences. And understandably, when you go through a funding process, that takes you away from kind of the day to day really. And we know from trying to catch up with you at various different times, you're like, no, my head's in it. I'm in fundraising at the moment. So how do you kind of balance that mission, I guess, as a founder to drive your business with your passion for what you set out to do in the first place?

SPEAKER_02: 8:21

I think I think having a really clear mission and vision is the drive. And it's the drive to get up every morning and work the hours that you have to work. And then with that kind of very focused approach, you can then build a team around you that then all share your passion. And that really helps kind of unite the team and have a really clear decision-making process of what are we going to prioritize. If it doesn't contribute or correlate to the North Star metric of what we're going after, then we don't work on it. it so it's you know it's so much beyond me it's not about me at all i'm just you know kind of get to be the thought leader but it's there's so much more than me so yeah it's really about creating that environment where the whole team can focus on that mission and then we're building out the more scalable technology that will allow us to have a larger impact so what we used to do very manually through spreadsheets is then slowly understanding how we can replace that with tech build something that is scalable that can help students both matching students the relevant properties giving them access to any add-on support that they need and then on the land on the agent side giving them kind of a marketing crm that can allow them to scale their portfolios more effectively um so yeah all of that kind of has to has to correlate to that mission and it really helps having having that charity

SPEAKER_01: 9:42

because is that mission changing all the time as you've understood more about the pain points, more about the sector, more about the technology, or did you have that big picture mission at day one?

SPEAKER_02: 9:53

The big picture mission, I think unlike most businesses, actually has stayed the same because it's always been around how can we you know dramatically improve the way that students go about renting so that they can focus on what really matters which is that university experience and how can we understand that every student is unique and has their own unique preferences and we can match them to the best housing and with that kind of mission at heart we've had to kind of iterate and better understand what that means for the supply side of our marketplace so how can we build something that is really unique that solves a really specific pain point that can then enable us to offer the tenant the best experience, the young renter the best experience.

SPEAKER_03: 10:36

So obviously you're running the company, CEO of the company, you're also effectively that thought leader and that figurehead. That's always something that is quite difficult to be a credible thought leader in an industry that you don't have a huge amount of experience in. And my first thought when I saw Hyber and when somebody sort of said, oh, have you seen these guys? They're doing quite a lot down in Bristol. My initial thought was, here's another person with minimal experience who's going to come in and thinks they know exactly how to take the marketplace industry by storm. And that's certainly not me being disparaging because I get a lot of people who come to me like that all the time completely fresh, I would say very green. I then saw you on stage and I saw you talk and it felt totally different to a lot of the other people that I'd seen come before you. And you actually seemed more experienced and more credible than many of my industry peers. So I think you've really leveraged that thought leadership piece and taken that through. And that's of course helped you with the fundraiser as well, because it's an eye-watering amount that you've managed to raise there. And I think it's really interesting that probably the biggest difficulty you'll have is deploying that capital in the right way rather than raising it because of your profile and what you're doing for the industry. But what is it that's continuing to drive you? And do you see that there's a sort of... I don't know, not necessarily an exit point. I don't expect you to talk about an exit plan, but what's your ultimate goal?

SPEAKER_02: 12:09

Well, our ultimate goal is, and what drives me is that they can just see a very, very clear gap in the market. And that's the same as when I was still a university student to where it is today, which is there's a really clear pain point. We operate in a market where the users on both sides hate the experience and there's pain points across the whole industry industry there's so much inefficiency what drives me is a very clear vision of what we want to create the impact I want to have on the student market across the UK and be able to very clearly see what that product can look like from a student and a landlord side and how we really can create that win-win and going about it in a different way to how other people have done it before and I think going back to the point you just phrased there I think what two personality traits I think are probably quite important is being able to tell related stories so the power of storytelling to really bring people into what you're doing why you're doing it and why it matters and that's important whether you're on stage or whether you're pitching onto a grand competition or investment and the second personality trait is unwavering optimism you have to be able to take knocks on knocks and you just have to kind of get back up and find a new approach and learn quickly and not have any ego involved

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

with your mission had Can you take on the whole sector or do you want the industry to change? Do you want to bring everyone on this journey, whether they're relying on your platform or not?

SPEAKER_02: 13:43

100%. I think there's been a huge problem in the past and now where everyone use everyone as a competitor. And I've always had the mindset that most people are not competitors, they're partners. And if you genuinely care about the mission and you genuinely care about supporting the student rental market and wanting to make it a better experience, then we have to all work together and bring all of our solutions together to create one connected, better journey. So I think there's so much more room for collaboration and we can't really give credit for it in our market. Our coaches also do not reinvent the wheel. We're not trying to take over the whole space in one go. We're not trying to build a jack of all trades. We're focusing very clearly on one part of the market. We don't think there's been enough attention. And that has been like the lettings. Lettings is super inefficient from listing and marketing, inquiries, viewings, offers. That is our space and that's what we're tackling. And then we want to integrate with every great other system out there. And we want to include every other great add-on service, whether it's referencing and tenancies agreements and guarantor replacement schemes and deposit replacement schemes. We are not trying to put resource into other people's space. We want to solve a unique problem and create a better experience and make sure that's integrated with other great third party softwares out there.

SPEAKER_01: 15:08

We've talked a lot on our podcast around technology and sometimes the lack of technology in this sector. And I was nodding my head vigorously at the Operational Real Estate Festival when you said that we can't even get the basic tech right, but we can't even track a lead from the start of the process right to the end and wholeheartedly cannot agree with you enough and it's crazy that we can't do that so how frustrating is it for you that maybe the tech that is available in society and has been developed and has been invented is not really being utilised in this sector as good as it should be.

SPEAKER_02: 15:42

I think that's the opportunity. I think the reason why our sector is vastly behind is because we haven't had the pressure. It's been a very safe investment. Property has been a very safe investment. And it's only now that smart capital is realising that their margins can improve, but it hasn't had the need to in the same way as other industries. So it's only now that people are really reviewing their and looking for ways to, you know, improve our OPEX and try and find ways to save money. And we've had to kind of go through that market dip for people to actually reconsider what are they using and how can they improve processes. But that creates a great opportunity for us to come in and radically improve how people work. I think there's a lot of an educational campaign that has to go alongside that of explaining, you know, not trying to use technical jargon, but breaking things down into what are the key pain points and how are we directly solving those pain points. and co-building alongside some of these big players.

SPEAKER_01: 16:38

Have you seen that change since you've been in the sector? Have you seen that shift of how technology is viewed and that investment in technology is viewed?

SPEAKER_02: 16:44

It's very slow, not yet, but it's starting to happen. I think the frustration is, especially in the student market, everyone has wanted to jump into student accommodation as an investment opportunity. And then you have the big funds like Apollo, the PE funds that are starting to realise that they have no visibility and transparency over their portfolio performance on an even weekly, monthly basis. And a lot of the way that that data is mined is still manual and leaves room for human error. So there's some very basic changes that we can make. And that's really what we're bringing to market to give investors, operators, owners more visibility across their portfolio to understand how clicks convert into inquiries, the best inquiries, the viewings, the offers, to understand how that customer funnel works across different portfolios. portfolios across different locations and then they can use that data to scale their portfolio and it's all about being more in touch with what tenants really want because then you can understand why a tenant's rejecting your portfolio is it because it's too expensive is it because there is not enough you know space maybe you're not prioritizing natural light like really understanding and being more in tune with what renters want

SPEAKER_00: 17:57

logical part of my brain is saying that surely the sector the people that are leading the sector the investors the developers the operators Surely there's going to be a churn of younger people coming into the sector. Like I said, the logical part of me thinks, well, surely that embracing technology and making change will happen organically because the kind of, I guess, the older generation that's had it good, that's done things the way that it's always been done, won't be in the sector forever. But then you've got that convergence. You've got Gen Alpha coming up, who will be the next generation. So I think it's crazy and very, very naive and arrogant of the sector to think that that new age group, those younger students, are going to be happy doing things the way it's always been done. But surely... there'll be more acceptance of it because the sector, the people that are leading it must be getting younger. I

SPEAKER_02: 18:46

think that people are being forced to be more open and that's mostly because of market dips. So when people are seeing actually that the portfolio performance has dropped, they're not getting the same yield and returns in their investment, that forces people's hands and it really takes a market dip to then people to actually look at alternative solutions. And that's a shame. You always want people to be, as you were saying, Sarah, more open minded to technologies and more proactive and long term thinking. But the reality is, is that they're not going to be often unless you have a certain type of person leading company, unless the data says that they could be making more money and they're under pressure. So, you know, we've seen that over the last 12 months. I think that's the perfect time for us to really all come together and say, OK, how can we actually see a dramatic change in the way that young people rent? Because, you know, you order food, you can get that within 10, 15 minutes. You want to watch anything on TV, you can use any of the different platforms out there. Everything within our life is immediate and efficient and quick. Yeah, you're still having students having to print off forms and walk up and down the high street speaking to different local agents. It's incredibly outdated and that's the change you want to see.

SPEAKER_03: 20:04

I do think we're looking for that change. I think the entire student accommodation industry across PBSA and HMO is looking for that professionalization, innovation, and the tech solutions have been really slow, really slow to sort of rear their heads, I suppose. And that is, I think, because we've got a lot of legacy systems that have been slow to develop, slow to adapt, and haven't really put too much into innovation. So it gives a real opportunity for a disruptor to come in. I mean, would you class yourself as a disruptor and Hyber as a disruptor?

SPEAKER_02: 20:36

I think disruptor, especially in our industry, can have really negative connotations I'm part of USA's you know coming in to be like the knight in shining armor to support both sides and create a better experience a lot of the gut knee jerk reaction especially when you're speaking to kind of local agents is very against any new technologies and softwares and they think you're going to price them out in the market and so we're trying to avoid language like disruptors and avoid that mentality of the right move where if you get you start relying on it it's going to just continue to increase their prices by us being really tenant focus we can give that reassurance to the landlords and agents we work with to say we'll never price you out because you'll make our properties more expensive and that goes against everything we stand for so i think we can really align by being that kind of consumer focus tenant focus

SPEAKER_03: 21:26

i like how transparent and open the pricing is everything seems that you know it's pretty much all on the website isn't it so i think that's something that everybody finds appealing knowing exactly how much you're going to have to pay for it and i remember first coming into the industry and And seeing student.com on a, seeing Luke from student.com on a panel and saying to him, like, how do we know that you're not going to turn into the next Airbnb or booking.com when we're paying 18%, et cetera. So it's great that you're, that you and Hyber are so transparent about that. You know, in terms of the, you're a tech solution, which means that you're in a very different category when it comes to fundraising. How has that journey been for you? And what have you learned across, across raising the amount that you have?

SPEAKER_02: 22:08

Raising money for the first time as a first time founder is incredibly difficult because you don't have a network. So you have to go out to build your network whilst you're kind of crafting your pitch and trying to raise that money and often a tight timeline is the deadline. So the first step in that is really trying to capitalize off of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is incredible because it gives you access to really interesting people that can open up your network. And so the best approach is really understanding, okay, what are your buckets? So for me, it's, marketplace, prop tech, female founder. How can you outreach in a really personalized, well-crafted and sensitive way that makes you stand out to begin those conversations and tap into the angel network? Because once you kind of pitched one angel and you take that feedback and iterate, then you can tap into the rest of their network and you can get introduced and kind of passed around. So that's the kind of beginning part of the process. And a big part of my story has also always been competition. So grant funding, or awards, ways that you can just get on stage and you can speak. Because then if you can tell your story to a room full of people, they're going to go and tell network effects. They're going to go and tell their network and introduce you to people that can help you then find and get access to capital. So that's been a big part of the way that we've grown and the way that we've accessed investors and then really kind of scaled it up from there. I

SPEAKER_01: 23:35

was just going to ask whether being a female tech... entrepreneur in a property real estate landscape? Has it been a positive experience for you? Has it been a hindrance? Has it been, you know, how... Is that still playing out in the sector or actually... It's not even something worth discussing.

SPEAKER_02: 23:52

From a exposure perspective, it's been very useful because it is, I do find it quite frankly ridiculous. Sometimes I'm asked to be on the panel and I'm next to someone with, I'll be next to three men who have been in the industry for 25, 30 years. And then there's me and I'm thinking, I should not be here. But the reason I'm here is because you couldn't find another female CEO in our sector to be here. So I'm going to make the most of it, but it's ridiculous that I am here. And I think that every time it's a complete privilege to be on that stage but I really don't think I should be and I was on there very early because of the fact that there are those quotas and there's not enough female CEOs with, you know, platforms in the space. So, and I think it just, the experience of being a female founder is very much, you have to be quite protective and careful of who you let in. And what I mean by that is you get a lot of people that will reach out and try and be an advisor and tell you that, you know, the business isn't going to go anywhere without their support. So you have to be quite careful of who you let invest in the business and also who you let kind of advise you because, you know, API can make or break and your time is everything. So being able to say no.

SPEAKER_01: 25:04

Just to clarify, you absolutely deserve that space on that stage and you command it and you totally nail it every time.

SPEAKER_03: 25:14

I was going to say something very much along those lines. I think with, you know, 2% of VC funding goes to female founders. That's absolutely staggering and horrifying. And then you throw in the fact that you're in prop tech and real estate is completely dominated by middle-aged white men, to be completely honest. And yeah, I think fair play to you, but this isn't something that you need to be thinking, hey, I've got imposter syndrome over... Every time we see you on stage, it's very credible. The solution that I've seen, and I've been through your system, it is very credible and it is offering a genuine solution to a real problem for the industry. So no, you very much deserve to be there. And whether it's quota filling or not, who cares? Make the most of it.

SPEAKER_00: 26:00

I just wanted to go back to something you said earlier, Hannah, about storytelling. And I guess for our listeners, we've heard about your story, but it'd be really useful, I think, to share the persona of a student that's going through these pain points because I think a lot of our audience potentially work in PBSA and maybe don't have exposure to the kind of the PRS lettings process and you know a lot of people will pat themselves on the back and say aren't we doing a great job so I think it'd be really useful if you sort of shine a light on that process as you see and what you experienced as a student what you continue to experience and therefore why the other end needs to be fixed.

SPEAKER_02: 26:36

A big issue especially depending on what university you're going to so if we're looking at Bristol for example if you're going to one of the small universities universities like BIM or DBS or Circle Media, you are not actually going to really have access to halls of residence. So you're actually often going to be forced to go into the private rental market in year one, which is even more intimidating. Or of course, University of Bristol, University of West England, you'll be in predominantly halls of residence and then go into kind of private rental traditionally into second and third year. And that journey typically looks like, you know, you arrive in campus on September and within the first few weeks decide your housemates and start the looking process, the search process around beginning of November. Typically in Bristol, you're in groups of four, five, that's kind of most popular. And you'll have a kind of lead tenant that leads that journey and they will be deciding on behalf of the group. So they'll go out, you're hoping you're befriending the hyper-organised type that will take control of this. and they'll go out and they'll start looking absolutely everywhere, frantically, relying on word of mouth, looking across all the classified sites, of which the 7% of the time they get, They never hear back after they make an inquiry on right moves because they're deprioritized against a professional renter. So it's incredibly engaging experience because no one's getting back to you. You have no idea what's happening next. And you start booking in viewings and you'll go on the viewing journey. And often most of your group will never see the property. One person, two people in the group will go to the property. And it's always that difficulty because, again, you've got that lead tenant, but then you're trying to organize the rest of the four or five, maybe more people within your group you're bringing together. or you'll be a group of two, three, and then you'll be finding a house share, I mean, paired up with another four, five, six people to rent a larger HMO that might be up to 12 beds. As a student, I was in a 14 bed HMO property. So, you know, it's a huge property and that's kind of the part of the experience with a fully formed group of 14, but, you know, crazy to try and organize that group and get everything, the guarantor documents, tenancy agreements signed in time, make sure you don't lose the property and then you have the move-in journey. So it's something that we're putting together now is that those guides are clearing, the guides for first-time renting, breaking down exactly what you have to do into bite-sized content so that everyone in the group can be fully informed and know what to expect before they go to university. It's actually a series we're putting together with sixth form schools now. So we're already starting to bring it into the curriculum with PSHE. So we're doing workshops to kind of prepare people before they go to university to be thinking about some of these subjects around what can they afford? How do they understand their student loan and break that down into a budget? What is a deposit? What do they look out for when they go for a viewing? So they are prepared and kind of adulting 101 before they actually take that next step.

SPEAKER_01: 29:32

That's amazing. Can I make a guess that you were the lead tenant for those 14 students?

SPEAKER_02: 29:36

I actually wasn't. I actually was not. I was, you know, thank you very much, Francesca, for listening to this. Francesca, took over the whole process. I was not involved. It's very stressful.

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

But it's amazing when you put it like that, that they get to the end point. How many lettings fall through along the process? And I guess that's the point. That's why you exist. Because the landlord maybe doesn't want to put all of that time and effort into that group when at some point in the process, one of them will drop out. They won't get their deposit in on time. Their guarantors won't sign the paperwork. So can they really be bothered? to try and keep all of those tenants together when it's likely, I don't know what the fallout rate is, it must be pretty high, you know, that somebody that inquires gets to the end.

SPEAKER_02: 30:25

I mean, even in the data we have, around 80% of inquiries are rejected every week. And so what I'm most excited about, one of the features that we're bringing to market is smart recommendations. So we're continuously giving feedback to the landlords and agents we work with on, okay, we've just rejected 50% of your inquiries today or this week. And that because UK guarantors have to be earning 30 times the monthly rent. If you lowered that slightly, you'd be able to convert five more groups into viewings. Or if you were more flexible with the tenancy length and you allow someone to rent two days later, you'd be able to rent your property five times over. These small incremental changes, you're just providing the landlord with more data to understand how they can reject fewer, how they can increase the occupancy rate faster with the right groups and yeah that's the kind of lack of visibility that most landlords have they haven't had access to that data to make those small changes to then be able to capture the right groups early on in the year

SPEAKER_01: 31:29

what's your viewpoint on how early people have to start looking for that accommodation in their kind of second year or third year we know universities are not often too keen that it's pushed so early by the private sector but just be interesting to see what your viewpoint is on

SPEAKER_02: 31:48

yeah it's definitely been kind of supply driven as a trend and it's because of the supply demand and dynamics so if you look across the uk it's bristol manchester birmingham you know glasgow all the universities and their supply demand imbalances are when they start renting on november so they'll start looking at the end of october signing contracts and we leave for the following September. It's just very much driven by the supply-demand dynamics. And when a student goes onto a marketplace, they can see there's loads of properties, and they kind of relax and take their time. So it's that sort of mentality that's driven the panic renting. And a lot of landlords have seen that actually, if people rent too early in the year, then there's more likely to cause dropouts. And that's a big issue with the purpose-booking accommodation market, because if people are booking 10 months in advance, and then they have absolutely no contact with them in until the following September, what are the chances that they actually turn up? And if you miss that sales cycle, you can be left with voids. it's really important to kind of get that the kind of remarketing times right and it's something that once we have the more power in the in the market more authority we really like to do more educational campaigns to kind of slow down that pace so that people can spend longer getting their group right really working out what they want to ensure that you know that first property you find is the right fit and you don't end up having to drop out and cause everyone more hassle in the long run and

SPEAKER_01: 33:18

ultimately i mean students are in control of that because if none of them book then they don't have to rush like you say it's that education piece that that comes along with

SPEAKER_02: 33:27

it yeah it's an important kind of thing to keep in mind

SPEAKER_00: 33:29

i'm gonna say just to kind of try and and bring i guess the conversation um background really what can you see for the sector in the future I guess we know what you would like to see but you know from a realistic point of view what do you think the next kind of five years in student accommodation is going to look like in the UK

SPEAKER_02: 33:48

I'm really excited for it to be honest I think one something I'm really passionate about is the making sure we're thinking creatively about how we use spaces so in the past everyone was very kind of strict with you know there's a partnership accommodation for students there's a bill to rent for professor as co-living for nomads, senior living for 65 plus. But actually, if you look at most built-to-rent buildings, look at the tenant profiles, 50% plus, if they allow it, will be students. And co-living will be a complete blend of tenant profiles. So really, it should be about matching based on what does the tenant want in terms of location, budget, experience? What do they want from their rental? Are they looking for a quiet place to study or work? Are they looking for something more social? And matching based on that criteria into the right buildings and being more flexible so encouraging mixed use spaces and the same with senior living you know that if there are any buildings that are sitting there with empty spaces how can we really bring them in and utilize them for anyone that's looking to do a you know a master's degree or an exchange program or or even a grad scheme so really thinking about how we make the most of empty spaces and we're matching based on tenant profiles so that we can create communities and amenity spaces that are actually being used when people are going to get along. So I think that's something that I'm really passionate and I really want to challenge the sector on. And also just encouraging a bit more bravery with the developers in terms of we don't need to be, it doesn't matter if there's PBSA development next door that has a cinema room and a tennis court and a gym. Actually, if you can try and not compete, but you can be more affordable and offer a local membership to a gym and a local membership to a library and not have those amenities, in your building but you are a brand that are prioritizing on more affordable rents and we just need to see that bravery of not having to compete and think you know they can still get the exits that they need by going after a different type of segment in the market so just thinking more creatively around what's currently out there and how can there be some different types of stock that's coming to market and then lastly is just around you know helping students understand their financial health helping students who struggle to go to university and how is higher education because they can't afford university and accommodation so how can we give them access to capital at low interest rates or super low interest rates because they are backed by their university and they can use that capital to pay rent up front and access really good accommodation and pay it back at really low interest rates so how can we open up more accommodation to the student market and help people from different backgrounds feel like higher education is a possibility and I think there's so many more opportunities that we can do by focusing on that kind of guarantor piece and affordability piece.

SPEAKER_01: 36:47

Thank you Hannah I've really enjoyed talking to you I've always enjoyed watching you speak I think you are a real asset to the sector I think what you're trying to do for young renters is absolutely the right thing to do is what we need so thank you for coming and joining us today on these mini house series that we've got and talking with us about your vision and your plans and what you see the future being please do connect with Hannah follow Hyber they've had a wonderful journey and I've no doubt that's going to continue so do make sure you connect on LinkedIn and follow the journey of Hyber and what they're going to achieve thank you all as ever for listening I hope you're enjoying the summer break, whatever you're doing. Hopefully the sun is still shining and is always going to be shining all summer long. No more rain. And we look forward to bringing you the next session of How's Zoom.