Property in the 21st century needs to be shaken up and luckily there are an increasing number of people in the industry doing just that. Meet the disruptors.
Student Cribs
Taking student living upmarket
Dungeons of filth, with empty beer bottles, crusty baked bean tins and a permanent air of the unwashed may be the general vision of student digs, but not everyone starting out in higher education wants to live like The Young Ones. Charlie Vaughan-Lee, the founder of Student Cribs, certainly didn’t. Frustrated with not being able to find decent quality housing to rent while studying at Bristol University, he decided to just buy one. Vaughan-Lee refurbished the property to a high standard and then rented it out to students at just above market rent. It was an instant hit. It turned out that if you offered students a decent, trendy, upmarket product, they didn’t trash it. They took pride in it.
“We give students the benefit of the doubt and what we have found, time and time again, is that if you give them a nice place to start with, they will take better care of it,” says Vaughan-Lee. “Students aren’t treated like customers by the private rented sector, which is mad.”
Founded in 2002, Student Cribs now has 100 properties across the UK, and an ambition to grow to 1,000 over the next three years.
www.student-cribs.com @studentcribs
Naked House
Stripping affordable housing back to the bare essentials.
Founder Rachel Bagenal says: “We’re a group of young Londoners with a creative solution to our own affordable housing needs. It started as an idea born out of desperation, but is fast becoming a reality.”
The average cost of a home in London is now £458,000, which is out of reach for the Average Joe. Shared ownership has become one of the only real options for the capital’s younger generation but it is in short supply and is often unaffordable, says Bagenal. Naked House thinks it has the answer.
“Our solution is to go back to basics,” says Bagenal, “saving build costs by creating a neighbourhood of ‘naked’ houses.”
The specifics of a Naked House include a well-designed shell with high environmental performance that acts as a base layer that can be built on, improved, adapted and extended over time by the occupant.
Bagenal says: “We think this will make cheaper homes that are better suited to people’s needs. And we hope the process itself will build a real sense of community.”
More than 150 London households have joined the project since its launch a year ago and Bagenal is currently on the hunt for land for the first Naked House development.
www.nakedhouse.org
@nakedhouseCB
MEND
Community as client and social sustainability
Mend, founded by Liane Hartley in 2010, is a social enterprise specialising in responsible procurement, planning and place-making.
Altering mindsets around urban change and the role that communities and organisations play in their future is how Hartley describes her business.
“I help communities and organisations see the importance of creating places and spaces that grow community instead of just containing community,” she says. “I embrace comfortable chaos, change and disruption as positive creative forces that will shape the future city.”
Hartley adds: “The role of the professional and the non-professional will blur as development and design becomes more user-oriented and co-design and co-creation practices for making cities become more prevalent.”
Mend is involved in all ranges of projects from small community
group-led schemes to major urban transport and regeneration projects such as Crossrail and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It provides solutions on anything from revitalising vacant
spaces to ethical procurement commitments.
Not content with disrupting the sector’s approach to place-making, Hartley has also set up the Planning in the Pub network, offering non-planners (especially young people) an opportunity to learn more about the value of planning; and Urbanistas, a collaborative network aimed at growing women’s leadership in the built environment.
www.mendlondon.org @lianemendsacity @planninginthepub @urbanistasUK
MiFlats
Flexible living for a future generation
PRS pioneer and West End landlord Criterion Capital is looking to shake-up the private rented sector with a US-style service-driven concept. Miflats aims to provide Generation Rent with a flexibility of tenure not seen in the UK before, allowing tenants to upsize and downsize as required.
Iain Murray, director of PRS at Criterion, says Miflats will be run more as a customer service business than as a PRS investor and that the concept is about giving tenants “finger-tip choice”.
The Miflats process will be an entirely online transaction, allowing potential tenants to virtually pick their home, the package of service they want from broadband, on demand TV and film, laundry service to home furnishings, all the way down to whether you want the kitchen drawers stocked with teaspoons.
A Miflats App will give customers instant access to the Miflats team. “You’ve got to mirror the demographic that will occupy the flats,” says Murray.
But with such an emphasis on the online and openness through social media, Murray is acutely aware that the service Miflats offers has to be top notch. “People are less likely to believe what is written on a company website than they are elsewhere online,” he says
“The landscape for the private rental sector is changing apace and being a passive investor is no longer an option,” adds Murray. “The consumer is demanding a rental product and service that suits their lifestyle.”
Criterion has fast established itself in the private rented sector with a pipeline of 10,000 flats for delivery by 2020.
www.miflats.com @miflats
Lidl
Welcome to the Lidlclass
German budget grocer Lidl has the quartet of established UK supermarkets shaking in the aisles. The firm has taken a record market share from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, some 3.6% in the latest figures, has well and truly disrupted the sector.
With 608 stores in the UK, providing annual sales of more than £3bn, the chain has set itself a target of 1,500. And soon.
Led by Ronny Gottschlich in the UK, Lidl is investing £220m in stores and warehouses this year, aiming to open between 20 and 40 new locations per annum.
Costs matter at Lidl and to provide customers with quality at a lower price than its rivals, it cuts them anywhere its “Lidlers” can’t see, including using motion sensors to keep energy bills low.
www.lidl.co.uk @lidlUK
The Collective
Affordable living with luxury benefits
Today’s young professional is not willing to compromise on quality but with rising rents is often priced out of the environments that suit their ambitions. Step forward Reza Merchant, the 25-year-old founder of The Collective.
Launched in 2012 using a £1.8m bridging loan secured against his family home, The Collective is a shared-living concept offering affordable rental options for people on median salaries.
Run-down properties are turned into compact living spaces with clever design packing entire living quarters into spaces as small as 120 sq ft. Rents range from £500 to £1,000 pcm, but include weekly linen changes, a room clean, and in the latest properties, access to spas and private dining rooms.
“Time is everyone’s most valuable commodity so extra services and whatever we can do to save time for our tenants are only going to add to their experience,” says Merchant. “I would go so far as to say that we are selling more than just a room. We are selling a lifestyle.”
The Collective already has more than 1,500 units both existing and in the planning process and Merchant has ambitions to grow the company to 5,000 within the next 12 months.
www.thecollectiveltd.co.uk
