BTR has a great story to tell - but it must improve its narrative

Why Build to Rent must reshape its narrative to address misconceptions and drive housing delivery

One of the early initiatives of the recently launched Build to Rent Taskforce is to explore how the Build to Rent sector can improve its narrative.

Over the dozen years or so of the modern Rental Living movement, the sector has been pretty good at communicating within itself – sharing news of deals, developments and best practice, as well as highlighting obstacles to greater delivery. However, with some notable exceptions, the sector has been much less successful when it comes to communicating its many benefits to the outside world.

Author: James Pargeter, Project Board Member – the Build to Rent Taskforce and Senior Advisor – Global Apartment Advisors (GAA)

For decades, the UK has not built enough homes across all tenure types, and the provision of market rent homes have largely been taken for granted via the fragmented Buy to Let sector. The consequences are now catching up with us – the Build to Rent sector can provide better, quality rental choices for people, but it needs support to be able to grow faster.

Current challenges

There are many identified challenges and opportunities that face us now. For the previous PRS Taskforce (2013/15), the key challenge was financial – how could institutional capital be persuaded to invest in an emerging Build to Rent sector when immediate returns were less than delivering new homes for sale? At a conceptual level, this has been largely resolved – there is regular evidence of willing investment into rental living, if regulatory and economic metrics enable a level of viability necessary for schemes to progress.

Today’s challenge is no longer to kick-start an emerging sector – it is to get more quality rental homes delivered across the range of Build to Rent’s spectrum of geography, typology and affordability to suit people’s needs, and to persuade policymakers to enable and encourage this. We want to provide better rental options for more people, often caught between the inaccessibility of homeownership and the eligibility criteria of designated affordable homes.

I see this approach as much about changing the UK’s culture around renting than anything else. As the Build to Rent Taskforce draws together the British Property Federation (BPF), the Association for Rental Living (ARL) and Homes England, alongside a range of other committed organisations and individuals, it can represent the sector with a combined voice which will strengthen the collective narrative.

The Build to Rent Taskforce intends to look outwards rather than inwards. There is much evidence that Build to Rent is still not well understood by many Local Planning Authorities, planners, policymakers, the media and, crucially, the public for whom we aim to deliver. A long-standing national aspiration towards homeownership continues to challenge policy support for renting.

Whilst inertia is understandable, people’s lives and the wider needs of society have changed enormously over recent decades, and many of the assumptions that underpin housing policy need to be updated using current evidence. The positive culture around renting is changing, but not quickly enough.

On balance, the sector has perhaps not done itself many favours by mainly highlighting the biggest, shiniest, most luxurious developments, or to talk about the resulting ‘premium rents’. Such schemes of course have a place in the broad range of rental demand, but Build to Rent has gained a resulting generic reputation as being high in price, extensive on amenities and exclusive. In the worst interpretations, Build to Rent can be viewed as not being for ‘real people’ and irrelevant to addressing local needs. We all know that such perceptions can be misguided, but how do we best counter them into the future?

Improving perception of Build to Rent

Build to Rent needs to focus on improving the perception of its mission. It must demonstrate the numerous benefits that this type of quality, well-managed community can bring – not just to its own residents and investors, but to the wider neighbourhoods in which Build to Rent communities are located.

There are huge opportunities for a more positive narrative for Build to Rent – whether that is for high-density urban multifamily or co-living communities, or for single-family housing that has even greater geographical potential.

Within the current Government’s admirable focus on new homes delivery, the Build to Rent sector has the potential to contribute much-needed additional homes, including affordable ones, at scale and speed to help to address the housing crisis. It can act as a catalyst for wider development within a mixed or triple-tenure approach, which can really help acceleration towards the 1.5 million new homes target.

The Rental Living sector’s placemaking ability doesn’t get enough attention. Arguably Build to Rent does this better than any other type of housing, so we need to focus on how Build to Rent strengthens local places and neighbourhoods – not just by highlighting the benefits to our own residents, but by addressing the needs of the whole place, its local economy and culture, alongside the long-term incentives for stewardship that mean that our efforts are genuinely for the future.

A key point which is often missed relates to broader economic outcomes that go beyond just quality rental homes. Businesses across the country increasingly want a better range of local housing opportunities for their people, not only to help with recruitment but ongoing retention too. Build to Rent can not only help to bridge the gap between two ends of a polarised housing model that no longer meets everybody’s needs or aspirations, but it can also help to support activity and investment into modern local economies.

Building support

There is wide support for better renting out there, and we need to ensure that this is brought into the planning process – by being open and authentic in its understanding both of local needs and the challenges of viability that it currently faces. Growing research, such as the ‘Who Lives in Build to Rent’ series, paints a helpful picture showing the range of different people already benefitting from Rental Living across demographics and income levels.

More research will assist in showing where this needs to diversify further, such as how best to expand towards mid-range ‘attainable’ rental homes, whether for key workers or those in the ‘missing middle’. This is a worthy aim, but one that faces even bigger viability challenges. It will require better understanding and pragmatic cooperation between the sector and planning authorities to encourage the investment needed to make it happen.

In summary, I urge the sector to refresh and clarify its appeal to external audiences. It needs to show how Build to Rent satisfies key renters’ concerns – including affordability, quality and security – across a wider range of housing types and rent levels, whilst appreciating their aspirations. This needs a change of emphasis from much of what has gone before, a genuine sense of purpose, and a consistency of language to minimise misunderstanding.

At its heart, I have always believed that the primary Rental Living message is a simple one: “everyone rents at sometime during their lives – Build to Rent enables them to rent well.”

I look forward to the Build to Rent Taskforce continuing to make a real difference – by improving understanding of how Build to Rent addresses wider housing needs, enhancing how the sector is perceived, and enabling more quality rental homes to be delivered more quickly for everyone who needs them.