I recently met Mark Allan CEO of Unite student housing. An impressive guy – apart from upsetting me because of his youth (I remember when I was always the youngest person in each meeting).

I was really impressed how Mark and Nick Porter before him have transformed student housing from either a cottage industry dominated by individuals looking to make a quick buck or distracted academic institutions whose core function was teaching, not property.

Unite have taken the industry, professionalised and consolidated it, produced a brand and got institutional investment into student housing all in a relatively short space of time.

Today the private residential market is showing some of those same characteristics that student housing showed 20 years ago. It’s a fragmented industry dominated by individual buy to let investors, with a mass of small letting agents of differing quality, little emphasis on customer service or brands, and little institutional investment.

Taking the lead of Unite, I believe in the next few years there’s a real opportunity to create brands, professionalise and consolidate the private, rented property market and attract institutional investment. I hope Urban Splash has a role to play in this.

Urban Splash has a rental portfolio of more than 300 properties around the country.