We still await the issue of the Montague Review into funding the private rented sector (PRS).Peter Bill ran rather a splendid piece covering it a couple of Fridays ago but it didn't provoke the release of the actual document, as I was rather vainly hoping.
And this country continues to need massive investment in housing on a scale which the old models cannot deliver; we know only too well that professionally managed funds to deliver investment into the PRS are long established in other countries and offer advantages for both investors and the industry.
Perhaps, though, the market is already beginning to respond.
Residential property fund manager, Hearthstone Investment, just announced plans for a £50m investment in private sector rented housing schemes.
In what might well be described as a "green shoot", it has secured the first of these deals, worth £22.5m, with Barratt Developments.
It is not the straightforward import of the US or continental model though, oh no.
The deal will see Barratt contributing a portfolio of show homes, which will then be licensed back to Hearthstone, providing the fund with immediate income, before the show homes are then let to private tenants or sold once the development site completes.
Christopher Down, founder and chief executive of Hearthstone, is quoted as saying:" "The business was set up to fundamentally change the way the UK invests in residential property.
"We believe that investors should have the same choices in residential property as they do commercial property and other asset classes".
Clever stuff, which could show the way. But show homes tend to be in single figures, there is no mention of building a community.
Readers of this blog know that UKR is also working away at entering the PRS market, but that this is as a by-product really of our regeneration projects, and a vehicle for building real communities.
We don't just wish to do it by scale (about 200 or so units in any one scheme), we wish to do it by concentration in location, "place making" if you like.
And we wish to provide shops and other amenities for our residents within our developments. We want to make life easy.
We spend a lot of time agonising over where to put the ice cream parlour, I kid you not, because we think ice cream is a very important part of life. And the current UKR strapline is get a life not a mortgage.
My children all get this completely. The kidult is now 21, as you may be bored with hearing, and has just left university in something of a fanfare (she got the Dean's Commendation; dunno what that means but I had to slip it in somewhere, as I am seriously BURSTING with pride).
In common with most of her peers she has a massive student loan and she has not got a job yet.
Do we really want her to get into further debt in order to get into a mortgage that she cannot afford?
Well of course not, but she doesn't want to live at home for the rest of her life (nor, you can be assured, do her parents) so she will have to pick her way through the nightmare of the current private rented sector.
And it is a jungle out there. It isn't just a parent's natural fear of slum landlords and all that that entails. She may be 21 and as tough as old boots but we are very protective.
When she flits, we would like her to be somewhere safe, where folk look out for each other. We would like to see renting as being a positive choice.
We would like to know that that place will be properly maintained and looked after and that there are facilities there that she could tap into.
And somewhere that responds to her needs.
UKR see ourselves with a new consumer brand, which engages directly with the British public, one that directly responds to our residents' needs.
Now how many house builders engage directly with their public? The answer is none.
And the reason that they do not need to engage with the individual person, once you're past the marketing brochure and show home stage, is the "wham bam thank you ma'am" nature of the transaction.
Once a house builder has sold you some rabbit hutch somewhere, where you cannot swing a cat and there's nowhere to keep your bike, then they do not need a relationship with you ever again, because the chances are you will never buy another property from them.
Worse still, because you have bought a so-called "luxury home" you, as the poor unwitting punter, then have to collude with this nonsense by pretending it really is a luxury home, because you will have to sell it someday.
And truth is the first casualty of more things than war. We need a change. The creation of a professional private rental fund operating at scale is something that the UK badly needs.
Montague must quickly find us a way through or, perhaps better still, as Hearthstone are doing, the market needs to wake up and do it for themselves.
But that will not be enough.
This industry will have to shape up and do something that almost every other industry you can think of does like falling off a log: have a serious relationship with the people it seeks to house.
"Get a life and not a mortgage" as a slogan might chime with economic trends but it does entail there being "a life" on offer.
"Get a rent-book not a mortgage" doesn't quite cut it.
Residential property fund manager, Hearthstone Investment, just announced plans for a £50m investment in private sector rented housing schemes.
In what might well be described as a "green shoot", it has secured the first of these deals, worth £22.5m, with Barratt Developments.
It is not the straightforward import of the US or continental model though, oh no.
The deal will see Barratt contributing a portfolio of show homes, which will then be licensed back to Hearthstone, providing the fund with immediate income, before the show homes are then let to private tenants or sold once the development site completes.
Christopher Down, founder and chief executive of Hearthstone, is quoted as saying:" "The business was set up to fundamentally change the way the UK invests in residential property.
"We believe that investors should have the same choices in residential property as they do commercial property and other asset classes".
Clever stuff, which could show the way. But show homes tend to be in single figures, there is no mention of building a community.
Readers of this blog know that UKR is also working away at entering the PRS market, but that this is as a by-product really of our regeneration projects, and a vehicle for building real communities.
We don't just wish to do it by scale (about 200 or so units in any one scheme), we wish to do it by concentration in location, "place making" if you like.
And we wish to provide shops and other amenities for our residents within our developments. We want to make life easy.
We spend a lot of time agonising over where to put the ice cream parlour, I kid you not, because we think ice cream is a very important part of life. And the current UKR strapline is get a life not a mortgage.
My children all get this completely. The kidult is now 21, as you may be bored with hearing, and has just left university in something of a fanfare (she got the Dean's Commendation; dunno what that means but I had to slip it in somewhere, as I am seriously BURSTING with pride).
In common with most of her peers she has a massive student loan and she has not got a job yet.
Do we really want her to get into further debt in order to get into a mortgage that she cannot afford?
Well of course not, but she doesn't want to live at home for the rest of her life (nor, you can be assured, do her parents) so she will have to pick her way through the nightmare of the current private rented sector.
And it is a jungle out there. It isn't just a parent's natural fear of slum landlords and all that that entails. She may be 21 and as tough as old boots but we are very protective.
When she flits, we would like her to be somewhere safe, where folk look out for each other. We would like to see renting as being a positive choice.
We would like to know that that place will be properly maintained and looked after and that there are facilities there that she could tap into.
And somewhere that responds to her needs.
UKR see ourselves with a new consumer brand, which engages directly with the British public, one that directly responds to our residents' needs.
Now how many house builders engage directly with their public? The answer is none.
And the reason that they do not need to engage with the individual person, once you're past the marketing brochure and show home stage, is the "wham bam thank you ma'am" nature of the transaction.
Once a house builder has sold you some rabbit hutch somewhere, where you cannot swing a cat and there's nowhere to keep your bike, then they do not need a relationship with you ever again, because the chances are you will never buy another property from them.
Worse still, because you have bought a so-called "luxury home" you, as the poor unwitting punter, then have to collude with this nonsense by pretending it really is a luxury home, because you will have to sell it someday.
And truth is the first casualty of more things than war. We need a change. The creation of a professional private rental fund operating at scale is something that the UK badly needs.
Montague must quickly find us a way through or, perhaps better still, as Hearthstone are doing, the market needs to wake up and do it for themselves.
But that will not be enough.
This industry will have to shape up and do something that almost every other industry you can think of does like falling off a log: have a serious relationship with the people it seeks to house.
"Get a life and not a mortgage" as a slogan might chime with economic trends but it does entail there being "a life" on offer.
"Get a rent-book not a mortgage" doesn't quite cut it.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!