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.
Thanks for your comments Amanda.
We’ve recently amended the font on our website so it’s darker and easier to read (we’d had similar feedback from a couple of other people too). Hope it helps!
Kate Amin
Brand Director, US
until we stop believing that property is a good investment you won’t be able to change the rental resi market. ten per cent of all mortgages are held by buy to let lanlords - a decade ago it was only 1per cent, much of this property is empty or under occupied. it ’s not just fragmented, as you say, it’s a mess, and the Gov should never have allowed the market in second homes to grow unchallanged and allow crap flats ( not yours I hasten to add) to be built simply because of greed, and the easy availability of cheap credit.
Amanda Baillieu
Editor, BD
ps this is a very un-user friendly blog. does the type have to be quite so pale ?