Why detailed resident data is crucial for effective BTR expansion

Despite planning and funding setbacks for build to rent (BTR) in what is one of the toughest years for housebuilding in decades, the sector continues to establish itself as a crucial solution to UK housing needs.

Last year, £4bn was invested in BTR and figures for Q1 2023 show £820m transacted in BTR – not far off the figure for Germany, Europe’s largest investment market. Forming a large part of that, UK single family housing enjoyed a record quarter for investment.

Awareness and interest are also growing from consumers. Data from Rightmove, content partner for our 2023 Build to Rent Report, revealed a 323% increase in tenant demand for BTR on its platform.

However, as the sector expands and diversifies, it’s crucial that lessons are learned from the best and worst performers. Investors want to see a proven business case, and here at HomeViews we’ve seen accelerating demand for data on resident satisfaction to aid BTR funding and growth.

In response to this, and wider market demand, we have expanded our existing data while segmenting it in greater detail and adding new metrics to provide the most specific insights possible.

Wider horizons, deeper insights

Our annual Build to Rent Report previously analysed BTR as a single class of housing. However, we now identify resident reviews across different segments of the ‘rental only’ sector, ranging from BTR apartment and single family housing to co-living and also rental homes owned and managed by housing associations and councils.

We can also identify reviews of new build BTS apartments or houses by owners, tenants, shared owners and HA or LA tenants. This extensive filtering allows us to interrogate the data on a more useful level.

For example, resident ratings on HomeViews for UK BTR as an overall category dropped across the board for the first time in 2022. Drilling down into the segmented data allowed us to see that this drop was driven to a large part by a greater proportion of reviews from single family housing residents, as well as by BTR apartment residents in London.

Further analysis of review content showed that low ratings for management and value categories were a major cause of the overall ratings dip for BTR apartments. A sentiment analysis of reviews for BTR communities that recorded the biggest dips in ratings showed increased mentions of topics around crime and problems such as rats, faulty/broken items or other issues.

Tailored data

In recent weeks, I’ve spoken at five BTR industry events, presenting insights from our resident experience data that covers 90% of completed developments in the sector.

Almost every developer, operator or investor I spoke to asked me what our data reveals about specific challenges or questions they have as they plan new sites or seek to improve existing communities. A webinar we hosted recently with Rightmove prompted a flurry of questions from attendees around demand, facilities and pricing for BTR.

Those questions are usually too specific to answer effectively in general webinars, reports and white papers.

Filling the gap

Up-to-date transactional evidence for BTR has historically been scarce. But now we are fielding far more location-specific queries as well as questions around pricing, unit size, facilities and tenure. BTR operators also want to track and benchmark performance across larger portfolios and against a variety of competitors and housing types. All of this is possible with existing data but require a bespoke analysis, which is we decided to take our business in a previously unplanned direction.

Handing over the keys

We took the decision to make our resident review data available for the industry. We wanted more operators, house builders, HAs and developers, as well as architects, consultants, researchers and agencies, to be able to access the data.

This new offering – ‘HomeViews Pro’ – is a dashboard that includes tools to filter and analyse over 36,000 resident reviews, each containing 18+ data points. Such is the level of demand that we see, we also now steer our annual reports towards giving Pro members ideas on how to conduct their own research using the tool.

We also supplemented our existing resident experience data with research into pricing, building unit sizes and facilities advertised by BTR schemes. So, what kinds of insights do this dataset reveal about BTR in the UK?

Key findings

Below we share some interesting findings from our free 2023 Build to Rent Report and also our Extended Build to Rent Report, usually only available to our Partners and HomeViews Pro members.

The facilities residents really want

The four facilities advertised by all 10 of the highest-rated BTR developments on HomeViews (for Facilities rating) were a gym, concierge, resident events and pet-friendly. Nine of the top 10 developments also offered 24-hour on-site management, communal lounges, bike storage, WiFi included and on-site maintenance team.

For our extended report, we looked closer at on-site management, using the HomeViews Pro tool to compare developments that specifically advertised a 24-hour service against those that didn’t. We found a clear correlation between this service and higher ratings across every rating category (star rating, location, design, management, facilities and value).

Community size

Just for our extended report, we analysed resident ratings for BTR communities of varying sizes. Firstly, we took the median number of units in all completed schemes in the UK, according to BPF/Savills data – this was found to be close to 300. When looking at resident ratings for BTR communities of fewer than 300 units versus those of 300 or more, the larger developments were rated higher for every category on HomeViews.

We then created building unit size categories of: less than 100, 100-200, 300-400, etc, and compared average ratings for each building size grouping in London. We found that the 300-400 unit group was the highest rated across every rating category.

Evidence for the planning process

With planning restrictions being such a major impediment to housing provision in the UK, we wanted to demonstrate how our data can be used to prove the success of certain types of housing when compared with others, and for specific regions.

First, we compared BTR residents in Tower Hamlets with tenants in comparable new build homes. BTR residents rated their experience higher across every category for this region. We then looked at Leeds, and compared the highest-rated BTR communities in the city with the highest-rated BTS schemes. The top four BTR developments were higher rated than any of the top four BTS buildings.

Sustainability from the resident’s perspective

In February 2021, we added new questions around sustainability to our review form. All residents are asked if sustainable features are important to them when considering their next home. If they click ‘yes’, they are then asked to pick up to three sustainable features that matter to them the most.

BTR residents place more emphasis on recycling and bike storage than new build owners. As might be expected, owners are more interested in energy saving measures and building eco ratings than BTR renters.

The resident is always right

Since HomeViews launched in 2019, we’ve found a natural fit with the BTR industry. Its focus on providing an outstanding service for renters was matched to our goal of providing operators and developers with the detailed resident data they need to continually optimise their services, as well as giving them a route to greater transparency with customers and an easy way to amplify positive feedback.

We’ve now worked with almost all the leading BTR brands in the UK. We look forward to seeing our data also being used by suppliers and designers to BTR and other sectors. This will ensure resident feedback is a key consideration as the UK works to solve its current housing crisis.