This Blog:
- Calls on policy makers to recognise that a well regulated consumer oriented private rented sector is a social good.
- Invites the public sector to do what is necessary to stimulate large scale provision of purpose built privately let accommodation.
- Challenges entrepreneurs to create a business tailored to the needs of this market
- Provides space for all those who are motivated to contribute to the discussion, especially consumers.
- Promotes ideas about the design of a BuildToLet business, not just the design of homes built to let.
1 comment:
Not sure if you have seen the new report from the Resolution Foundation (which specialises in thinking about the "squeezed middle") on this theme: it makes the case, supported by the facts, for institutional investors to fund residential development (with support from local authorities in the form of land and of planning consents that do not insist on affordable social housing only).
You may recall the CASPAR (City-centre Apartments for Single People at Affordable Rents) developments we commissioned at the JRF at the end of the 90s. They won several architectural awards and were a good investment for the Foundation. But my aim of enticing institutional investors into the PRS was overtaken by the Buy-to-let phenomenon: our developments are now surrounded - in Leeds, Birmingham and York - by similar (not quite so attractive!) blocks of apartments but none are owned by the pension funds/insurance companies I was targeting......because (apart from worries about returns, reputational risk, political interference, etc.) these investors need to buy £100m+ of property (each), off the peg, and this is just not available. Chickens and eggs come to mind.
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