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.
Tags: apartments, lettings, rent, student housing
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 ?
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