Live Altitude Special - In Conversation with a global powerhouse panel on the importance of brand and values, frustrations with marketplaces, Women in PBSA, AI, Geo-political outlooks and more.

This week we have a very special bumper episode recorded live from Chamonix where Dan and our podcast guests have been enjoying the networking, keynotes (and yes of course... the skiing, activities and Après) at the Altitude event hosted by ASK4 in the Alps.

Our panel is a stellar lineup: 

Anouk Darling from Scape, Scott Lewis from Homes for Students, Paul Watson from Now Students and Suraiya Comunello from Nido joined Dan to discuss:

🔹  The importance of brand for students and investors
🔹 Scape Australia’s unique approach to values (Parental Advisory required! 😂)
🔹 Women in PBSA – How do we drive real change?
🔹 The impact of rising populism on international student numbers
🔹 Occupancy levels at HFS… 😁
🔹 Is this sales cycle the new normal in PBSA?
🔹 Have incentives damaged markets, and will they return this year?
🔹 Are marketplaces a necessary evil? (Strong views on this one!) 
🔹 How is AI currently being used? 

Our sponsor for this season, theEword  are true experts in digital marketing specifically for the property sector.

We are also delighted that MyStudentHalls are continuing to sponsor the podcast, Mystudenthalls.com - Find your ideal student accommodation across the UK.

Each week, Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists and Daniel Smith of RESI Consultancy will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions that aren't often asked. This podcast is for anyone who works in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-living, Later Living, university accommodation, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the individual hosts and guests.

Transcript

SPEAKER_06: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Howes, the shared living podcast where we dive deep into the world of PBSA, BTR, co-living and everything in between. Today we're exploring the future of purpose-built student accommodation on a global scale. I'm Dan Smith from Resi Consultancy. I am not joined today by Sarah and Dini because today we're recording from a very special location. We are at Altitude in Chamonix. For those who don't know, Altitude is an incredible event that brings together leaders in PBSA and BTR from around the world. It's hosted by Ask for sponsored by Global Student Living and student.com and industry leaders are here to kind of gather not just to ski we honestly do talk business but we're here to share kind of bold ideas and a bit of innovation challenge the status quo and of course enjoy the stunning backdrop of the French Alps which certainly helps to get everyone in one place we brought together a powerhouse panel of industry leaders today from across the world and we're going to discuss key trends shaping the sector I'm sure you're all appreciating the powerhouse reference there but Now, I'm very grateful for you all to travelling to Chamonix, first and foremost, but also to joining me on the panel, especially to look at quite how far you've come all the way from Australia. So yeah, before we dive in, a quick word from our sponsors, The E-Word.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13

This episode of Housed, the shared living podcast, is brought to you by The E-Word. digital experts in driving leads and putting people in your places.

SPEAKER_06: 1:22

Thanks very much to the E-Word for sponsoring this season of Housed, the shared living podcast. You'll hear more from my student halls a little bit later on. So yeah, I'd just like each of you to briefly introduce yourselves. That'll be great. We'll start with Anouk and go around the table.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36

Thanks for having me all the way from Australia. Anouk Darling, I'm the CEO of Scape. Scape is Australia's largest owner, developer and operator of purpose-built student accommodation. We've got about 18 and a half thousand, actually close to 19,000 apartments in Australia and another 3,700 under development. We've about 13 billion in assets under management and we also have a built-to-rent fund.

SPEAKER_07: 2:01

Fantastic. Paul? Hey, Paul Watson from Now Student Living. Now Student Living is a third-party operator of PBSA across the UK and Ireland. We were founded about three years ago and partnered with sector asset management experts, generation partners we pushed the button on going live as an operating platform about 18 months ago. We're onboarded our key clients now at 10,000 beds, say across UK and Ireland. Our focus is really on key investor relationships and we're doing some pretty cool stuff, you know, working with one investor on decarbonising and refurbing a first-generation portfolio when elsewhere we're looking at growth within the sector. So, yeah, glad to be here. Scott?

SPEAKER_05: 2:44

Hi, I'm Scott Lewis. I'm COO at Hemsworth Students. So we're an operator of student accommodation across the UK and Ireland. We've got around 50,000 beds under management across I think about 50 towns and cities under a number of operating brands. Homes for Students actually turns 10 this year. I joined in 2016. It's the very early days of the business and it's been exciting seeing the growth.

SPEAKER_06: 3:04

And Soraya?

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

Soraya Cominello, CMO of Nido Living. We've got huge growth plans in play to go to Italy, Germany as well as our current markets in Europe.

SPEAKER_06: 3:14

Thank you very much all of you. Now we're all quite keen to get out skiing at the very least well some of us are anyway so we'll keep this relatively short and sweet as much as we can but we've got some really sort of key topics to to get through from women in real estate to importance of brand and then let's see how we get to beyond beyond that so yeah let's let's start with the brand you know obviously suraya being being a cmo it's becoming the defining factor in student accommodation and actually and look i found it really interesting what you were saying about um scape yesterday bit where whereby you know the reputation effectively is the brand and i I think that's really, really important that we can make sure that we're showcasing that with each of the students that come through our doors. So how do each of your organisations leverage that brand to attract and retain students? I mean, it's obviously a very competitive environment.

SPEAKER_01: 4:04

I think from our perspective, I mean, I probably shouldn't say this as a CMO, but we know brand is not the first thing students think of. Of course, it's the location, it's the price, it's the condition and quality. But ultimately, it's once they've done that shortlist We are all very similar, you know, same similar products, similar locations. And it's when they're coming to those kind of decision making time, that's when the brand really comes into play. It's, you know, how they've interacted with you. It's if they've come and done a tour, it's the customer service that they receive. It's that consistent messaging and brand story from what they see when they first search for you on an ad, going through to the website to actually being delivered when they go in and physically see the product, speak to somebody. That's where the brand comes into play. Yeah, I think there's a...

SPEAKER_06: 5:08

There is a real focus on that brand on an international basis as well. And there are certain brands I think that people will go to, like Chinese students, for example, will seek out a certain brand. And then there's that reputation that gets passed down from generation to generation or from cousins and brothers and sisters and whatever. How important do you see that in terms of the international focus for brands like Nido? And we'll come on to the rest of you. Is it really important to really push that brand? Or as you said, is it much more further down the line Well,

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

that's an interesting point. I mean, obviously, it's very local as well, but we have definitely seen that in players we've grown across Europe. So having that overarching brand reputation and trust, which you've built across markets. So as much as we localize, we still have had parents who, you know, have won. daughter living in Madrid and another one in the Netherlands, and they've chosen Nido because of that. They know that the product that they will have in Madrid, they'll have the same type of service, although localised, in the Netherlands. So that's really helped us, and there's quite a few of those stories going around. As the market is becoming more global, people are studying in different locations. So, yeah, it's 100%. And,

SPEAKER_06: 6:23

Scott, how difficult is it for you to... manage the brand presence of a pure play third party operating platform with obviously multiple brands. because the focus is quite often on the building, but are you finding that having that solid brand of homes for students with then your other Prestige and Evo and the various others, are you finding that that is allowing you to expand on a global level, or is it still much more focused on it's just about the property and you're there to manage it?

SPEAKER_05: 6:54

No, I think I agree with what Soraya said. It's that the brand isn't the first thing that students look for, but what brand does is it gives a comfort to the student themselves the parents, the university, the wider sector. You know, there's things that come with the brand. It's about how it makes the student and the resident feel. And then you get brand advocacy and you get strong retention. And that's to us what goes into the brand. It's how we behave and how we treat them. So you can have, you know, student accommodation does change hands you know new owners come in and the nature of what we do as third-party managers that is the nature of the the sector what the name above the door ultimately doesn't matter if the you know the way the residents feel is is right and so that that's the thing really so um Yeah, we spend a lot of time and energy on the brands and we have multiple brands and that's mainly to allow every building, the broad spectrum of buildings in the UK particularly, to fit. But yeah, so it opens the door and people like a recognised brand and a professional website and professional brand and everything else. They're never going to book. You can have the shiniest brand in the world. If it doesn't feel right and it's not a good place, they're never going to book with you and live with you.

SPEAKER_06: 8:15

I think that comes on to your point yesterday, Anouk, about the importance of keeping the students happy ultimately. And so you're really pushing that as effectively the scape brand is what I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_03: 8:26

Absolutely. Well, it's a part of it. So I do have a saying, which probably everyone knows, customer experience is the brand. And really, when you look at a homogenised landscape, and even though we're all doing brilliant things and globally, the only true disruption is your brand. Because if we're building wonderful buildings, we've all got our ESG requirements and commitments, we all create living and learning spaces that deliver the best results for students, then what is it? And it has to come back to the brand. So it is absolutely for us fundamental, but it's not just the experience, it's the IP that comes with that experience, and then how you market it offshore. And it's not just to, when you think about a customer, we've got investors, banks, staff, stakeholders, community, and that brand has to translate across all of those experiences. So it's not just a consumer, it's also a B2B platform.

SPEAKER_06: 9:18

And how are you showcasing showcasing the sort of success of Scape to the residents? You know, are there sort of accreditations? Because in the UK, we have Global Student Living Index, which is effectively a survey. There's some publishing NPS surveys, and then you have Investors and Students, which I know Homes for Students is very focused on. So yeah, how are you showcasing that?

SPEAKER_03: 9:40

So we have committed to a wellbeing index, and it's not something that belongs to the industry. It's something that we've created, and we use a third party... provider that does the research, so it's completely independent. And I kid you not, every year it comes out, this will be our third year, I shoot myself about the results because we publish it and we hold ourselves to it and we can't control the outcome. And that looks at students living, thousands of students that live within our environment and thousands of students that live outside of an escape environment. And it researches things about mental health, anxiety, sleeping patterns, eating, do they feel secure, do they feel the ability to make friends, et cetera, et cetera. And thankfully, we over-index on all of the criteria. It's also a litmus test, too, to understand what are driving student anxieties and concerns. So we can feed that back in. So it's not just about how we're performing. And we publish those results. And we hold ourselves accountable to the market around those results. So I think you have a reputation, then, for being the environment, the brand that allows students to achieve their potential and hold ourselves to that But that comes with an operating cost as well. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_05: 10:55

Yeah, I think it's interesting talking about the survey. So we talk about GSL Index and Investing Students. We use that data, and we've talked about it while we've been at Altitude. That data you get from students, talking about this brand and the comfort, there's no point in us all sitting in an office somewhere in the country going, this is what we should be doing. Last year we surveyed, well, we had 30,000 survey responses from our students, from our residents that live with us across the two surveys. And we use that data every day. We literally use that to tailor what we're doing and to constantly just tweak and change and just update. And that, to me, is this whole wider brand piece. There's no point having all of this data and all of these customers if you're not going to listen to them. So it's really interesting that it's a similar kind of approach, but... The data is published to a degree and it's benchmarked. And that's what I really like about both those surveys is you do get a view. And I think I'd

SPEAKER_07: 11:50

agree. I think the importance is that that feedback very rarely actually talks to the wider brand. So there isn't the feedback saying, now student living made me feel this. The individual asset, and that's where you have to take the data and the feedback that the students give you and really sort of dive into that at a very granular local level, work with those site teams and celebrate the successes, but also understand what are the learnings that we can take away. And for a student, I think you're absolutely right. They may experience a brand completely unintentionally because they're very focused on a and in doing so they get the awareness of the wider brand and they understand what that stands for and if they go on to study elsewhere or they have family members then you can leverage it but actually at the outset what are they looking for they're looking for location they're looking for a price point that sits within their budget and actually brand is not irrelevant but it's kind of irrelevant at that very early

SPEAKER_05: 12:50

decision-making. It's such a narrow window as well where people actually care about that brand. It's a very limited number of years of your life and a very tiny part of that year where you happen to care about that particular brand and then it's kind of done.

SPEAKER_01: 13:08

Yeah, I was just going to say on that point, I think marketers and the CFOs and finance team always have a little bit of a conflict, but getting the data and being able to show the value of some of the initiatives that you do on a brand side, probably the softer stuff, the data shows a huge focus on well-being and giving that kind of data to the investors is Thank you so much. I suppose a lack of importance placed on brand sometimes. It's kind of come at the end and actually it's such a key part of the customer experience. It should come at the beginning for investors. So I think we're slowly shifting the narrative, but the data is incredibly important to do so.

SPEAKER_06: 14:20

It's the data and the storytelling with that data. I think that's one of the most important things, actually painting that picture. For the students, live here because you'll be happy, first and foremost, and the brand is obviously, that is the brand. But then telling the investors as well. So how much are you seeing investors actually ask about that data, the sort of the well-being data? Is it something that you're driving or are they driving? Are they actually asking, are students happy living in your buildings?

UNKNOWN: 14:49

No.

SPEAKER_03: 14:50

They're not. So we're driving the narrative, but I always believe we should stay ahead of the narrative and actually help guide the investors because they're backing us because we're the leaders and the specialists in the industry. And without the students... achieving their potential living in our environments, then cost of acquisition is up, churn is high, and the returns become a lot more difficult. So it's really important that we actually educate and share, but I absolutely agree with Soraya's point that data-driven insights are key. It's not just instinctual. It's actually following what the data's telling us, taking out insights, and let's all remember what an insight is. It's an observation about human behaviour that unlocks growth. So it's all about the growth and the changes that we can deliver. And then they love it. Investors then love it. And then you'll hear them tell the story about it. And that's terrific, right? If it becomes their idea, then we go. I

SPEAKER_06: 15:45

know exactly what you mean. Paul, with your investors, obviously you've got some pretty big investors there. And you haven't popped up out of nowhere because you've been in the industry for years. But obviously now and here, being new brands to the sector, how have you found that you've been able to drive that narrative in terms of student satisfaction over, not necessarily over revenue or returns, it's just much more, you know, are you able to drive that being such a new brand?

SPEAKER_07: 16:13

I think so. I mean, and thank you, yeah, there is, I was going to say a wealth of experience. There is some experience that I've got in the sector, OK? We've been sort of doing this for about 15, 20 years now. But, yeah, absolutely, I think the... The value of student welfare and well-being and actually getting those students to the point that they have a real affinity for a building, at the very least, but then also the people who work in that building, therefore the importance of the service that's delivered and the advocacy, yes, for the brand, but also for that specific building and for that product in that market. That can allow you to drive rents. That can allow you to have a much... more effective cost per acquisition because you have a better student retention level within your building. It becomes a much more pleasurable building both to operate but also to live in because you gain this community feel and actually that's the complete sort of panacea for us in terms of how a building should look and feel is that it should have a really strong base of students who have been there not just for one year, but for two years or three years. And that is their default choice. They advocate for that, not just within the building, but the likes of Student Crowd and our Google reviews are all incredibly important. And we do see investors increasingly asking about how we are performing. So there are metrics around how are we maintaining or growing our performance Particularly student crowd is one that we value really highly because it is genuine students as opposed to Google reviews, which could be you or I or anyone reviewing a building. But no, I think from an investor perspective, they get that and the decisions that they want to make around, particularly as they take on some older assets, they maybe want to improve the amenity provision within those buildings. Okay, well, that's got to be driven by what the students actually want, not the perception of what students want. So, again, it's back to those insights and the importance of those for everybody.

SPEAKER_06: 18:12

Yeah, and that community feel, I think, is what everyone's searching for. Investors do want that. Obviously, they want their returns, but, of course, they want to make sure that the students, the end user, is actually happy. Scott, to what sort of extent do you think that staffing plays a part in that community feel? Because, yes, you can have the most... wonderful brand all the amenities and you know incredible rooms but yeah what sort of balance do you see in terms of how important staffing is I think it's

SPEAKER_05: 18:44

the most important thing I'm going to misquote student crowd so apologies Paul and team but I think it was something like 95% of positive reviews mentioned staff or the word friendly something like that I mean Paul correct me if that's wildly out but it sounds good anyway doesn't it but it was ludicrous ridiculously high anyway. And that's real data from real students, real residents, that are the ones that are most happy is the ones who talk about the staff. And that's massive. That can't be understated. So as a company, as a brand, we spend a lot of time on our staff. We actively look at career development opportunities. We look at internal promotions. We do all sorts of things to make sure our staff are happy. And that pays off. We've got really strong retention and it's that consistency and making sure the staff know that it's perfectly acceptable to spend time talking to the residents. That's part of the job, that's the role. There's all the hard FM stuff and all the health and safety things and everything else you have to do along the way. But that's really valid. And I think even more so with the wellbeing and the state of youth mental health and all of the other pressures and everything that students are feeling, having someone that you know you can talk to is huge. So it's massive. I think

SPEAKER_06: 20:15

it's the most important. How do you balance that? Being a third party operator where typically Hopefully, you get a chance to set the OPEX before you get given it. But equally, you are beholden to the investor in terms of how much they're actually willing to pay the staff. How are you able to balance that with actually getting the best possible staff that will create those communities? Because I know that that is a tricky thing. We've talked about it before. But yeah, how can you balance that? And also, how can we inform investors of quite how important that caliber of staffing is?

SPEAKER_05: 20:46

Yeah, I mean, it's always a moving target, isn't it? Your salaries, if you just look at the straightforward salary, there's always pressure on salaries. Everyone always wants to earn more money. That's a given. But I think it's hard to pinpoint, but it's making the people who are working in our business happy working in the business. And that comes through a whole raft of things, you know, communications, transparency. We live and breathe our values. One of our values is force for good. You know, we encourage people to do volunteering days. We do charity things. You can nominate your own charity. There's absolutely loads. We've just launched an internal career progression programme called University. We do formal qualifications. We do informal qualifications. It's just adding... I suppose we're lucky that we've got some scale as well in terms of we have a lot of vacancies and a lot of opportunities. So it's not just this linear path and it's dead man's shoes and you can't really progress in your career. You can sidestep into central services, you can move into marketing, you can go into technical roles, and that happens on a monthly basis in the business. So that's the benefit of having... scale and lots of lots of stuff so it you know it's it's really nice to see all those internal promotions and job changes and you know there's so many success stories of people starting as a part-time CSA then they became a general manager now they work as a and the technical side and and so on it's great so and I think people see that as well and see there is actually a place for me in our business which all kind of feeds into this whole picture of people are happy, I hope they're happy, and that's the feedback we get.

SPEAKER_07: 22:22

But I think that's incredibly rewarding for the individual, also as a founder, as we are in our business, or a leader within your business, is to see that progression and understand that you're retaining that knowledge and that experience. And that allows... other levels of the business to grow and benefit from the experience if you can progress people through in a consistent, structured

SPEAKER_05: 22:45

fashion. And retain knowledge. Our senior team is really stable. We have an average tenure of 7-8 years because the business is not even 10 years old. It's enormous. We have general managers that literally started in 2016. We've got members of staff with payroll number 7 still working for us and So it's great, but it's that retained latent knowledge as well of the business and like, oh, we've seen this before five years ago. Here's what we need to do. And that really helps as well. It's having leakage out of your business into other competitors ultimately isn't

SPEAKER_06: 23:25

great. I struggled so much with that. Obviously, Nido, when I first started there, there were four people in a back office. And then we quickly scaled and grew. But we still were sort of a small operator. And I had to fiddle about with job titles to keep people happy, as Soraya well knows. And I had a very big marketing team. And Soraya joined and totally changed the way we worked, which was much needed at that time because because it needed more scale, it needed more opportunity to scale. But keeping all of those smaller teams motivated and talking to them about development without just stringing them along was really difficult. So that scaling point, the fact that you've got that big scale of however many thousands of beds you've got, that makes it so much easier. Anouk, what are you doing in terms of Scape to keep your staff happy? And when I think about Scape and knowing Scape Australia as I do, I know how happy people are that work there, but what's the sort of secret sauce, as it were, to keeping them happy?

SPEAKER_03: 24:30

So I think not dissimilar to the conversations. You have to put people first, and you have to create a culture that people buy into. And so we've got really clear values that we high-buy, and they're a little bit different because, of course, we're Scape, and I have a background in brands. So we have things like, as part of our values, we have Rocket to Mars, which is always challenging yourself, innovating. Open-minded good vibes is another value and people have to come with an open mind, just remembering that there's a story behind everyone. People have a bad day for different reasons. We give a shit.

SPEAKER_06: 25:04

You'd see that on the office wall somewhere.

SPEAKER_03: 25:06

Yeah, absolutely. So we took... You get a bit of coercing with the founders to get that one through. So like investors and trust me, it's okay. We're big enough and we've got to be brave. We can't be vanilla and words become very vanilla and then you have vanilla environments. And we've got alphabet soup, which is our inclusive. So we're wholly inclusive. And I think for us, we've actually been recognized just last year as the best places to work for the size of our company. So we're the top three. And that's our teams. That's our people, our customer service teams really at the front line, which is so important. And they're the ones voting and they're voting with their feet. And that's what came out. So it's, okay, we're doing something right. And I think it ultimately comes down to culture. Now we're like a fast scaled startup. It's a high performance environment. And we don't, we've got really strict parameters. We've got no work from home, which isn't for everyone. Now, of course, we're flexible. You know, some is to pick a kid up from daycare or leave early or partner's sick or the dog's got to go to the vet or whatever they need, of course, absolutely. But we really believe that for people to achieve their potential they have to see each other. So no one ever works from home and also operating staff don't get to work from home. They have to be there every day for the students turning up and they're there 24-7 and therefore we can't have a head office that thinks somehow there's a different role. So we're very transparent, we're very clear and then our recruitment process is really, really really important. So people either opt in or they opt out. And it's absolutely fine if they opt out, but when they opt in, they know everything. They know that it's not work from home, they know the expectations, they know the culture, they know the values. And then we do a whole lot of initiatives. We've got a terrific people team, people and culture team. We have something called a Beulah Day. So we have a big mental health month in October, and Ferris Bills have been known for that. So you can take a Beulah Day in October, which is obviously not annually, but it's just any day. It's like an annual day. I love that. That's great. We have a whole lot of initiatives. escape stays so people can travel and stay in our assets around Australia. It's obviously quite a big place, so they love that. And so there's a whole lot of initiatives. But most importantly, and the things that the teams care about the most, is their own development and their own career pathways. So we really invest in that. We've got a terrific training platform. We have pathway programs. We have development programs. And then outside of that, in the industry, which is in Australia, we're fortunate that there's a property council in Australia, run a lot of initiatives and we're part of some of those initiatives which mentoring programs etc so we help our teams either get exposure to broader things within the industry context so I think if you don't actually deliver and measure then you're not you're doing yourself a disservice and the culture feels the same and investors do notice they do asset tours and they always say oh how is it we got every asset but your teams are always so great and wonderful and positive and it's because they're rock stars they're amazing people and nothing's possible without them and they have the hardest job and do the best work and yet they're probably you know in terms of the entry-level team members that they know that there's an opportunity to rise up within the ranks

SPEAKER_06: 28:23

Firstly, that was incredibly insightful, and I'm sure that that is on the website, etc., and you could just see it, but it feels like that was a really good in-depth insight into how to motivate and retain staff members. With the focus on being actually in the office, do you find that that is putting off women in particular? This is a nice little segue into women in PBSA. But yeah, do you find that that puts women off, or basically, how are you ensuring that you can attract and retain the best female talent?

SPEAKER_03: 28:58

Yeah, that's a really good question, Dan. I don't think so far in the experience, and this is my fifth year of Escape, I haven't seen the impact necessarily on women. I've seen the impact in certain departments, so tech teams that are used to very much, particularly from the coding side, what, why do I have to be in the office? I just need a dark space and I'm not coming in. Okay, well, you're not getting the job. That's right. All the tech teams in the office. I think the narrative around women in the workplace and even women in property is a very big narrative and we don't have a silver bullet for that. Do I think the work from home has changed that? No, not necessarily. I don't see it as limiting but I don't think we've got it right and I don't know what the answer is and we support an initiative which is a change initiative which is all about trying to get more women into the property and real estate industry and obviously I see it is personally something that I not that I can be responsible for every female but you know I'm a mother of three daughters I know how hard it was for me in my career at every stage and I'm new to the sector but every role I've had and I've been a CEO before in different industries it's tough so I think a lot more needs to be done and I wish I had answers to make it easier but I think definitely flexibility and also understanding you know when women need time off and have chosen to have a child they've want to come back to the workforce. That's, I think, where we get it really wrong. I think people go, oh, they've been out for a year. they've gone backwards and it's like do you actually understand how much multitasking capability that a woman has after having a child like they need to be promoted but you know there's not I think very big institutions have got it better I think you know the banks and things but for us as an entrepreneurial private company we're not there yet.

SPEAKER_06: 30:51

Soraya what are your I saw Scott gently pass the mic across to Soraya but equally Scott I know that you're working with women in PBSA with GSL anyway what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01: 31:01

I think the key thing to remember is that every woman is different. And I think that's lost. I think a lot of employers kind of put women in a box. So, okay, hiring a woman who's 35, probably recently got married, they automatically assume that she's probably going to have kids in the next few years. I don't know, should we hire her? Should we invest? And it kind of starts from there. There's this conscious... maybe unconscious but there's always that I think in everyone's mind that that woman is a certain age so she will actually not all women want to have children or they might not be able to have children or they might not want to work remotely you know they might prefer an office environment so I think there's a lot of big statements like being made or there in workplaces right now which actually you just need to dig deeper you need to find out what the individuals in your business want and that's not just women it's probably the men too because some of the men And especially since we've started Women in PBSA, I've been having so many more open conversations with men. whose kind of eyes have been opened and they're also, you know, they're married or have partners who are working women and they're having families and they want to be able to support their wives or partners. So maybe the men want the flexibility and they want to be able to step back to see their partner step up. You know, roles are totally reversing these days and I think that's what businesses need to remember that actually you need to give the men the flexibility too and the only way to do that is from the top down.

SPEAKER_06: 32:34

The men need to take that up, like shared parental leave, things like that. And I still think there is that focus for men on career. It's not expected of me that I'll do shared parental leave. And it's almost seen as a bit sort of, you know, you're a bit of a hippie if you're taking shared parental leave. But I actually think the onus is on us to actually make sure that we do that, not just in shared parental leave, but the other the other sort of areas of equality that we need to be focusing on as well. And I think we do need to get rid of that kind of unconscious bias. But how do we get rid of the tokenism? How do we make sure that this is a genuine effort? And what can we be doing ultimately? And Paul and Scott, obviously, I want to get your thoughts too on it, because I know that you're very focused on ensuring that the Women within your businesses are empowered. But yeah, how can we make sure that we go beyond tokenism?

SPEAKER_07: 33:28

I think it's got to be more, you're absolutely right, it has to be more than tokenism. And as a dad of two daughters, it's hugely important for me to understand, okay, how do you make a change? How do you create something that can endure for people within the organisation? And it is difficult. know it's we're not in a particularly in real estate we're not in a environment that is naturally empowering in that way so the the change that you can make sometimes feels really difficult and really you feel like you're not pushing on a an open door potentially um but i think for i can only really talk to to us as an organization we've really newly formed as we've you know embedded people in the business. There's just been zero bias within that whatsoever. We have the best people in the best roles and offer everyone the absolute equal opportunity to progress within that organisation. And we are predominantly a female Our workforce is predominantly female. Some of the best performing people that we've been able to progress in the business have been female, but we have to create the opportunity when they do want to take a career break or they do want to take childcare, that they can naturally drop back in and that there isn't any sort of negative impact of doing that. And that's difficult because... As a new business, we've created that culture, but we sometimes engage with wider businesses that don't see that. So you can create that culture yourself. You can be super proud of it. You can live it every day. You can show your business lives every day. But sometimes you'll bump up against other businesses that don't quite see that. And so you've just got to be really robust in saying, look, this is who we are. And Anouk was talking through some of those values. I just love them because they're so clean and clear and you know exactly what you're getting. And there's probably a tendency, I think, within real estate in the UK to be a bit waffly. Yeah, I totally agree. And to not sort of nail it and go, this is who we are, this is what we're doing, this is what's important to us, and screw you if you don't think otherwise.

SPEAKER_06: 35:50

And having something like, you know, we give a shit as a value rather than integrity or whatever else it might be. I think that's, you know,

SPEAKER_03: 35:58

it's all about storytelling. I think that's the last one, which was boots all in. Yeah, nice. Which is, you know, obviously, all the hard scaling. I think also to the earlier points, sorry, and Scott, I mean, you need to contribute as well. We've also, which I'm quite proud of, around the paternity leave, because, you know, we have obviously same-sex couples who are guys who are having children. And before that, there wasn't really a proper paternity leave structure around, well, how is that going to work? So I think just being really inclusive and really diverse and, you know, Soraya's earlier comments that everyone's an individual is actually trying to build something that takes into individuality into account and look at every scenario and then you know and I think that's why we were recognised as one of the most also on top of the best place to work we also were recognised as an inclusive workplace which was fantastic and I think it's because of initiatives of recognising the diversity in the workforce that we need right

SPEAKER_06: 36:55

yeah Scott how are you how are you seeing things within homes for students at the moment given the scale you've got

SPEAKER_05: 37:00

yeah I think obviously I'm on the committee for the women in PBSA I was really proud to be asked by TR going for that and I see my role on that as advocacy and allyship really and that's throughout the entire business we do and we're lucky I suppose this is part of how to avoid tokenism is you've got to have everyone at the top actually bought into it we We all do genuinely care about it. There's no one that's going, we just need to tick a box here or tick a box there. So when suggestions are made by the team or by the senior team, management team, it could be a CSA, it can be something that we like and other businesses do and we nick it. If it's a good idea, we do it. So things like shared parental leave, we don't talk about mat leave anymore. We have shared parental leave and that extends to same-sex couples, it extends to adoption leave, And that's been in place for a couple of years. But one thing that I always remember is a few years back someone approached me. It was when the Black Lives Matter movement was happening and the Black Squares and Instagram and everything. And we were talking about it at length and we didn't feel that we could... with all honesty kind of talk about that kind of stuff so what then what that happened is then that was the the seed was kind of planted of like how are we going to actually get to the point where we can talk about this and then what happened was we set up a forum staff forum called together is better and that kind of grew legs and that's run by the teams and and everyone's actually done it and we've ended up now winning awards at the company culture awards and things for our together is better program and it's that tokenism thing it's it's all well and good saying you know we're going to do this this and this and there's a policy but if you don't live in and breathe in it and actually invest in it so again that advocacy kind of role my role was going go off and do it it's a great idea you've got my full backing let me know how you get on if you need me for anything and then it it it was a groundswell kind of movement so i think that's really how you know the women point that we're talking about It's that. It's not just sort of going, oh, we need to get another woman on board or we need to do this, because that's tokenism. It has to be genuinely lived and breathed. And I think that's what the Women in PBSA committee and the aims of it is just to bring that to the fore and really make sure women, but also men, can... safely and comfortably talk about things, and I don't actually know the answer to this. Yeah. It's

SPEAKER_06: 39:33

important. And let's just call it out now. We're at a ski event. There are about 60 of us, and there are 11 women here, and we need to increase that participation. It is not that easy with, obviously, you know, childcare, et cetera, but also kind of justifying the time, I think, for certain people certain either operators, investors, et cetera, because they're so focused, women in particular are so focused on that and need to be proven myself. If I'm seeing that I'm off at a ski event, which, you know, it is a ski event, but it is very focused on PBSA, we are all definitely getting value from it in that way, networking and the sessions. I think we need to do a better job of making sure that it's okay for women to participate in events like this, that, you know, you look at Mipim. Mipim, there are literally hardly any women there at all. It is a sea of blue suits. And I think that is what has to change. It has to come from within. It's sort of endemic within the real estate finance industries. But yeah, a bit of an appeal to all of the female leaders in PBSA. Altitude is arguably the best networking event out there. So I would highly recommend coming next year. That's a good time to sort of move the topic on, I think. But I think there's a lot of work to do there but it's good that we've got the will to change. So I want to talk about, I want to do a bit of future gazing, crystal ball gazing. At the moment we're all focused on where are the international students, in the UK in particular, obviously in Australia too. We all keep a very close eye on what's happening in Australia because we've seen how the universities have shot up the rankings. The Chinese students are at the moment preferring Australia, having spoken to a lot of marketplaces and agents and also Chinese universities. So we're very sort of focused on, right, well, what will happen in Australia with, you know, potentially the policies coming down the line with slightly anti-international student rhetoric that we've been, you know, we've been caught up in the UK too. So what are your thoughts on the new policies potentially coming in in Australia, and how much do you think that that may affect international student numbers in particular?

SPEAKER_03: 41:53

Great question, Dan, and I think it's challenging. We all know perception is reality, and it's more the perception that's damning than the reality of what's going to occur. I think just to take a step back, international education in Australia is our third largest contribution to the economy. It's over$40 billion. Politicians would be mad... to cut that economic value out of the economy. But the narrative in Australia, and I think like everywhere else, housing crisis, cost of living, migration, and international students are a very easy target because they don't vote. And sadly, it's about motivations to vote. Now, I sit on a panel that reports into the Minister for Education and the Minister for Migration. Their rhetoric was, this is about creating a framework. I'm referring to the caps, which didn't get passed in legislation, but there's noise around policy. Their rhetoric was, this is about creating sustainable managed growth. I call bullshit. It was about populism and needing to have... to be seen to be doing something that they thought the Australians would care about because of blaming international education on one, changing the university experience, but two, taking away residential for rent. Now, unfortunately, even though there's a huge focus on trying to stimulate housing supply with the Housing Accord, The PBSA sector's not recognized within that. It should be. We actually alleviate the pressure on the residential for rent. We did a whole lot of market research, and I will say here, and it's probably also for the wider forum, something that we do in Australia, which I haven't seen anywhere else, is that we've created a sector-led body. So I chair the Student Accommodation Council, which represents all of the private providers of PBSA in Australia. I believe that rising tides lift all boats, and we need to do something together. It's no point one of us advocating and doing that. So when I sit on those panels, I'm representing the whole sector, it's not just SCAPE. That's been very powerful in awareness and us coming together as a united collective, which is really important. To answer the question around what's going to happen with policy, there's a couple of things. They've put in place a ministerial direction 111, which is around visa controls, which is sort of, I guess, a background hard labor to sort of manage migration levels and making choices around when university quotas in their minds, which were the caps that didn't come through a field. We are not yet seeing a slowdown in the demand profile for offshore. And Australia's obviously on the Asiatic ring. So China's a very important market, India, Southeast Asia. China's our number one contributor. And in Australia, it's quite different to the UK and Europe, I believe, that you've got a far greater domestic cohort. We've got a far greater international cohort. So it really does matter around the international numbers. But right now, we're not seeing that impact. You've also got to remember that not only the international students are contributing to the economy, but they're also outside of accommodation and education. But their discretionary spend, and those who are with us, is on average$4,000 a month. Now, that's greater than some of the average household spending.

SPEAKER_06: 45:30

Yeah, it's overlooked.

SPEAKER_03: 45:31

Yeah, so that's hospitality and retail. They're also a labour force. And they do a lot of jobs that, quite frankly, our school kids don't want to do. And then they're Visiting family and friends are the greatest contributor to tourism. Now, tourism is our fifth biggest export. So we will be, as an economy, we'll be absolutely fucked if there was hard measures. Yes, is there an undersupply in housing? Yes. That's a 20-year structural problem through bad planning and policy and stimulus that... international education is not going to solve.

SPEAKER_06: 46:09

It's a global problem.

SPEAKER_03: 46:10

It's a global phenomenon, right? We're all, sadly, and how has it come to pass, we're all in the same fucking position. So yeah, looking ahead, I don't think anything too radical is going to happen, but of course we're coming up to an election. And the opposition has been very vocal about their stance, but it's completely unpredictable. But they're also highly commercial and economic, so I just don't understand why you'd only want to have extraction exports as leading your economy. I mean, it's our number one services export, international education. So for the benefit of all Australia, I hope that they... They don't change it too radically.

SPEAKER_06: 46:55

It's about seeing sense, I think. We saw so much damage from the anti-international student rhetoric last year in the UK, and that reputation takes quite some time, probably two to three years to really flush through that, oh, okay, right, it's a Labour government now, but not everyone knows exactly what they stand for. Keir Starmer hasn't repealed any of the damaging policies that were put in place and I do understand why some of those policies were put in place in terms of the dependent visas being banned but I think there's There's a real worry in the UK that that anti-international student rhetoric will continue. And I'm speaking to a lot of people in the US as well, and they're really concerned about the Trump effect. Paul, do you think there is going to be a Trump effect? Do you think we'll see that students won't choose America? They may well choose the UK or Australia?

SPEAKER_07: 47:51

Look, it's so unknown. You can try and think, what would Trump do next? Literally, you can't base a strategy. What you've got to do is just be prepared for all consequences and work with your investors and your business partners to understand, okay, if this happens, how do you pivot? How do you take a property that is wholly reliant on international students and how do you pivot away from that? So, you have the appeal for a domestic audience, and that can be really difficult because price points are different, tenancy lengths are different, requirements in terms of amenity and service offering and the staff on the front desk who all speak Mandarin suddenly don't need to speak Mandarin quite as much because that audience goes.

SPEAKER_06: 48:41

Are you proactively diversifying your demographics in certain properties then to be a bit more defensive in that way?

SPEAKER_07: 48:48

I think the year that... year, 18 months, that PBSA has gone through has meant that nobody's proactively doing that. I think that is reactively happening as people say that latent cycle bump of international students who are expecting hasn't happened. We still have a percentage of our stock to fill. How do we go and fill that in a different way? And a different way might be at a different price point, or it might be with this, say, like a different proposition. but the whole of the UK market is in that space at the moment of saying, this isn't fucked, but we need to be really proactive in making sure that we have something that appeals, that has a broader appeal than it currently has.

SPEAKER_06: 49:33

And Soraya, what are you seeing in Europe? I mean, you've got a good European footprint, and it feels like we've got right-leaning governments, and there's very much that sort of, again, anti-international student rhetoric, whereby... you know, potentially... I mean, to be fair, the French actually put in a five-year post-graduation work visa for Indian students, and I know that that has seen an increase. But I still think there's a bit of focus on their languages as well, guarding that language and not necessarily doing the English language courses as much as would potentially attract as many Chinese or Indian students as possible.

SPEAKER_02: 50:13

Let's find your place.

SPEAKER_06: 50:21

Thanks very much to Dan and the team at My Student Halls for sponsoring this season of Housed. Do go and list your properties there. It definitely does work. So, Soraya. How are you seeing the environment and the sort of attitude towards international students in Europe at the moment? Is that something that you're keeping one eye on or is it very much front of focus?

SPEAKER_01: 50:43

We're keeping an eye on it. I suppose in the markets we're in, we've got a really varied international student demographic. So in Spain, of course, we get a lot of Latin Americans, a lot of, you know, Europeans who are doing Erasmus or shorter courses coming over. So there's not kind of been a key focus for us. We don't have you know one asset or any assets actually which are really dependent on you know one market so chinese students indian students so it's quite different to when we were in the uk so we're keeping an eye on it but it hasn't been front and center for iberia for example at this point in time

SPEAKER_06: 51:20

yeah and scott what are your what are you seeing in the market at the moment that's not me trying to get your current occupancy in your year on year good job um but from from what i'm seeing I think most operators are either a parity with year-on-year or they're slightly down year-on-year. In fact, the poll that I did on LinkedIn a little while ago, literally every operator said that they were either roughly where they thought they'd be or they're behind. No one was really out there barnstorming. I

SPEAKER_05: 51:52

think where we are unique probably in the UK market particularly is we do have the depth and the scale. We have every type of property you can imagine in pretty much every city. We have whole market view, genuine whole market view. So we're exposed in every university city in the UK pretty much. So it's going okay. I always find it interesting when you read things and a lot of your posts sometimes on LinkedIn that says like, I'm hearing this, I'm hearing this. And then I go and check the stats with a couple of the guys and it's like, not what we're seeing um but that's because it's in pockets so if your exposure is in a certain city that is more challenging this year and that's where you've got a lot of exposure and not really much else or you may be in three or four cities then obviously you're going to think it's bad whereas what we're seeing is actually it's it's okay you know it's all right out there you know things are going as a normal cycle now remains to be seen what happens for the rest of the year but I think and I've said it many times at various panels and things the anomaly isn't now the anomaly was the last three years you know where there was the COVID bounce and everyone was like going you know it's late in demand and people coming for their masters that didn't drop it's all that and I think there's a lot of people you know if you're new into the sector in the last five years that's what you think normal is and it's not so That's all it is. I think if you've been around, you know, I've likened last year to 2019 because it was very similar in cycle to that. It was the same kind of profile. Things have moved. Some markets have shifted. London's shifted earlier, which is great because it was always horrible waiting to the end of the cycle. So it's nice that that's earlier and some markets earlier. Nottingham's earlier. Every city changes every year, because there's never a static position. There's always a new stock, or there's VTR you've talked about a lot, or the university numbers are up or down, or the entrance exams have changed. But yeah, it's going okay. Internationally, we're in a good place. It remains to be seen what actually happens as the visas and things start getting approved. But I think it should work out

SPEAKER_06: 54:06

about right again. Yeah, I mean, Paul, I don't know if that's the way you're seeing it, but it's roughly where we are. I do agree with you. I think that there's quite a few investors that have been caught short investing over the last three years when it was pretty good. There was a nice bounce off the COVID and actually this isn't, that wasn't normal. This is normal and it is, there are definitely investors out there falling foul of that and I do think that's something that's going to continue to catch people out.

SPEAKER_07: 54:35

I would agree and I think We're looking at our sales this year and actually broadly we're in a good place year on year. We think in the majority of markets we're up, but some of that has been active decisions to secure more rebookers, to secure more early bookings, and we're certainly seeing the incentives that were flowing in later in the year, last year in the sales cycle. Some of those are still actually there from the outset from this year, so there's a very definite risk aversion towards the later cycle. Because it's, to your point, Scott, you can only deal with what you can deal with now, right? If there are people who want to book now, get them in. Lock them in and give them the best early rates and get them the routes that they want while they've got much more choice. So I think the market is... is actively doing that, and we're seeing that. But there's definitely some locations that are more challenging than others.

SPEAKER_06: 55:30

Yeah, of course. And you're not seeing that students are waiting that much later, so the booking, it's relatively okay? Completely market by market. Some, if

SPEAKER_07: 55:39

you're in a city that last year was slashing£50 a week off the rent when you hit August and offering£1,000 cash back... Why would you book early this year? You'd just sit tight and say, well, I can see all of these buildings have sprung up in the past 18 months. They need to fill them. They need me to fill them as a student. Let's wait this out and see what happens.

SPEAKER_06: 56:04

Yeah, I mean, I think this is where Marketplace is coming up. And I'd be interested to get your thoughts on Marketplace. They absolutely cashed in at the end of last season in terms of the commission rate and really driving that. Ultimately, Yeah, it was the scarcity that they were trying to create, I think, because there were minimal students, actually, that they were able to place, but the commissions were so high they didn't have to do quite as much work. I don't think it's particularly easy being a marketplace, and I think that relationship on a whole is pretty broken, fundamentally so, and I think that goes back to the foundation right away from student.com right through to the multitude of marketplaces that we have now. Now, how important are marketplaces in the Australian market? And I'm talking people like U Homes or Uniaco or University Living, those kind of

SPEAKER_03: 56:59

marketplaces. Yeah, sure. Sadly, they're very important because it's a complicated channel to capture students through, particularly in China, the process that they have, which is basically through their education agents and then the agents work with the marketplace. I think the marketplaces themselves are fraught with opportunities to create bad behaviour. So when legislation has changed very frustratingly in Australia around the Residential Tenancy Act and allowing students to break their lease with only one week's notice after 75% through. I think that we're seeing agents chasing double commissions where they'll place, they'll get their full commission on placement because they get paid at the beginning of the leasing cycle. They'll encourage the student to break lease and take it up with another provider, collect another commission. Now it's very hard to prove, but it cannot be anything other than that given the absolute number of break leases and the lack of supply. So it's not like, students have to know that they've got somewhere to go to. So unfortunately, you know, yeah, Aggregators or marketplaces, as we refer to Dan, represent about 48-50% of our bookings and the rest are from either direct or university partnerships. So we have a reliance on a platform that I wish we didn't and we have trust in partners that I don't know is deserving.

SPEAKER_06: 58:34

Fair play. I think it's... I mean, I'm sat around the table with Scott, who's one of the more honest people about marketplaces, and I know you've made your feelings clear. It feels like they are a necessary evil at the moment. And I think that, to a certain extent, does them an injustice because they are and they should be adding value to the student, helping them to compare their options. But it does feel like there's a bit of a land grab and there's some really shady tactics that we've seen over the course of the last three years in particular, really. And I think actually what's driven that personally is that they've all got investment and they've all now got investors with lofty targets. And they've built this business case for investment based on we're going to crack America or we're going to double in size or we'll get X amount of wallet share or whatever it is. And they can't do it. They just can't do it. They find it difficult to crack America. The only way to scale is to effectively poach domestic students using PPC and really pushing those Google ads out there. And Soraya, I know how frustrating that is for you too. And I think that is endemic across primarily Indian-led marketplaces, but we do also see it from some Chinese marketplaces too. And those fraudulent bookings were rife.

SPEAKER_03: 59:51

And absolutely, I mean, additionally to that, and everyone else will obviously have a view on this, but because they're trying to chase scale they're listing anything that's residential for rent so you know a marketplace ideally was to support a purpose-built student environment that looks after students and now we're saying resi for rent on marketplaces they can control the listings and where things sit so they're actually creating competition and then to that earlier point about if they spend in market and suddenly your search terms are being driven up because you're bidding against a marketplace operator that you're actually paying a commission to it's so counterintuitive so it's very very destructive and therefore it's an unhealthy reliance, that's what they are, and unfortunately a necessary evil.

SPEAKER_06: 1:00:35

Are you seeing much marketplace movement in Europe, Soraya? You know, is there much of a focus there because of the sort of smaller numbers of Chinese and Indian students in particular? But yeah, what's the marketplace situation?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:48

I suppose because of our experience in the UK, we are leveraging a little bit more to get those, you know, those international students, so Chinese, Indian students who may be interested in some of our European buildings to come. So I suppose it's worked in our favour in that sense that we've had the relationships, we know how it works. But again, we're trying not to be dependent on them.

SPEAKER_06: 1:01:09

Scott, how can we, because we moan about it a lot, and rightly so, because there are some genuinely shady tactics. The whole charging students a booking fee rather than the operator. I mean, firstly, in the UK that's illegal. I think across part of Europe it's illegal as well. And I think that has to stop. And we've had some positive movement there. I've had confirmation from U Homes and Fun Living as well that they won't be charging the student anymore or if they have in the first place. What can we actually do to make that relationship better with marketplaces?

SPEAKER_05: 1:01:46

I think there's been a, I mean, I've been very vocal about this over the last couple of years, but I think the relationship and the whole concept, I think you're exactly right in terms of the funding that came in. Something changed. There's a switch changed three or four years ago with marketplaces and how they operate. And what used to be, you know, I used to call it a symbiotic relationship. It was, you know, we were their supplier and they were our supplier. You know, it's... It all worked and everything was great. And back in the olden days, they used to be called international agents. I never signed a contract with a marketplace, ever, not once. But it suddenly became marketplaces. And with that, and this is the reality, so the quality of the enquiries deteriorated. The reason they're paid commission on the back end is for a booking, where the sales process has been done and that is a student that wants to live in our building, a specified building, and there's a contract to be signed. And we do thousands of enquiries, we do the legwork, so we've had to invest 200,000 quid a year in actual people to intervene and put a manual intervention into the marketplace processes now and that's not what they want, it's not what we want. But that's been necessary. And then there's the anti-competitive behaviors. PPC ads targeting our own keywords is competing with us. And I don't pay a million quid a year to one of our competitors in an operator just to give them a bit of extra money. So I don't see why we should do that with someone who's actively competing with us. And these are all the frustrations. So for me... know they they do things and the frustration from my point of view is you have to constantly be checking yes what's going on and have to change something and that's not how a partnership is that's not how a partnership is i get from their point of view they want sustained commissions and sustained access to buildings everything else and that's cool but We want sustained international bookings. We don't want domestic students. We don't like to compete with us. We don't like to charge our students fees. And there's all of these things which are publicly out there and it has been happening. So yeah, so I was very vocal about it and it's nice to see they've changed and they've got a bit better and they've come back to doing what we want, but we shouldn't have to have had that intervention. And that's the bit really for me that's kind of

SPEAKER_06: 1:04:07

broken. And once you take your eye off them, you shouldn't have to then worry about what they're doing. Like everyone always seems to have to have one eye on them. because, oh, sorry, we accidentally switched on PPC again. Or, oh, no, yeah, that student has to be charged with booking because we also booked their flight or their transfer or whatever. Like, bullshit. Like, you've got to be working with each operator to make sure you're adding value to the process. That's absolutely key. And I think, yeah, it is very much greed. And I think there's a lot of focus on hitting those investor targets rather than managing relationships and building a long-term relationship Paul, how are you seeing the marketplace industry, given you've worked in the sector for years now? I don't know quite how prevalent they would have been at Liberty Living, but are you surprised by quite how reliant other operators are on marketplaces? I

SPEAKER_07: 1:04:57

think the paths have changed. I think back in the Liberty Living days, student.com were huge in that international agent space. As Scott said, that evolution has changed, and they're positioned way more as marketplaces and aggregators completely. That's what they are. Yeah. We're seeing all the same challenges that everyone else is. Fees being really ratcheted up and people just feeling in a place that they have to take those because particularly last year there was an obvious decrease in the volume of students and therefore you want to secure whatever's out there but everyone's in that same space. Everyone's in that bun fight that's driving up commission levels and no one wants to be there. It's a huge cost of sale But typically, unless you have a very dedicated presence in China, primarily, you're not going to attract those students as easily as somebody who is a marketplace. You've got to balance those two things out. But there comes a point where it just doesn't stack. And you have to take a view on what's a sensible approach in

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:04

that situation. I think for the marketplace, this isn't slinging mud at marketplaces all the time. There is a very valid purpose for the marketplace. That's the point. We want to work with those marketplaces. We want them to provide those inquiries and those students to all of our builders. And there's plenty to go around. That's the thing. It doesn't have to be this. And that's the thing. So it is very important that they exist and do provide them. We just want to work nicely together in a professional harmonious environment. That's kind of the...

SPEAKER_06: 1:06:36

They've got to be an extension of a marketing and leasing team or marketing and sales team. That's the way I see it. We'd reach into an international market. Now, there are some very good domestic-led marketplaces that we all know, my student halls being one of them. But I think that's where there's a real focus on those internationals, bringing them in and making sure. That's what a marketplace was originally founded to do. When Luke Nolan founded student.com, that was the plan. Just bring in Chinese students and that's it. Now that's evolved and some of those companies evolved. U-Homes actually being an exception in that way because they're still 98% Chinese students. But that sort of aggressive expansion has... has, I think, put a lot of noses out of joint. And that's clearly on a global level. So marketplaces, you have a lot of work to do. And I think everyone just needs to get around the table. Well, that's the frustrating thing. I can have a lot of these back-channel conversations with each of you and then with marketplaces, but everybody needs to be talking around the same table. We're coming towards the end of the recording. I think we could probably talk for at least the whole morning. I'm desperate to ski, so is Anouk as well. But yeah, I just wanted to kind of close with some of your thoughts on maybe the next five years or some of the next trends and the innovation. This isn't a segue so that I can talk about AI, I promise you. But yeah, Anouk, what do you think is going to be the innovation or the sort of defining characteristic of PBSA over the next five years?

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:06

I think within the living landscape we're really going to have to look at a symbiotic relationship between BTR and PBSA in Australia. A lot of capital is flowing into BTR and for a student it's non-distinctive. And so PBSA then to continue to be the preferred place to live is going to be more challenged, I believe, over the next five years. We're not at scale yet, but it's definitely going to happen. Innovation, of course, AI is the hot topic. We're already seeing so much productivity gains for the use of AI within our business. I think one of my favourite examples is an internal one where we've created an Einstein chatbot that captures all of our standard operating procedures, and we call them standard operating guidelines, and therefore anyone in the business, and particularly if you're front of house staff, there might be new training, any question they can type in, a random question, what do I do if there's bedbugs well, let's hope we don't have big bucks in our portfolio. However, the chatbot will come back with, this is all the things, steps you need to take, and by the way, here's the link to the SOG for you to actually do the work and the research. Now, you know, for AI, I think, gosh, you know, that person would have to ask their supervisor, the supervisor would then have to go on to a sharepoint, the sharepoint would have to go through all of the standard operating procedures, find the right material, if they didn't have the knowledge, and pass it down. So I think this whole knowledge sharing and capability that AI is going to enable that will shortcut I guess one hanging on to information but helping with access to information has been great so I'm excited about where AI is taking us and we're going to see a lot more of it I think tech in general outside of AI as a category but there's so many opportunities for tech innovation within the living sector so I'm excited about that and I still think ESG will be a thematic but we'll just need to land on where whether it's the E, the S, and not so much the G.

SPEAKER_06: 1:10:14

I am delighted to hear you talk about ESG. That's good. Paul, what are you thinking over the course of the next five years or so? Where are we going to end up?

SPEAKER_07: 1:10:25

I

SPEAKER_06: 1:10:26

think

SPEAKER_07: 1:10:27

AI is obviously a really hot topic. What I would love... Broad brushstrokes, but I'd love that to get to, is it just takes the pain out of what we ask a lot of our operational staff to do that takes them away from delivering great service. The people that we employ are so passionate about the relationships that they can build with students and the impact that they can have, both in terms of student welfare, well-being, community building. and then the commercial success of that building just purely who they are and the impact they have on people's lives. That's where we want them to focus their time. So we can leverage more of AI just to take away some of the more granular stuff, the reporting. I love the idea of a wiki that's just, okay, stuff is happening in a building. How do I deal with that? Just that could be so much easier. So I think that's a really interesting piece. I think the other bit is there's a lot of first generation stock, first and second generation stock in the UK. It's well located. The bedrooms are a great size. It's under amenitized. We're working with a specific investor at the moment who's purchased a portfolio of six of those assets. Really interesting approach to decarbonizing those, to bringing those properties really back to their fit for future. So you're not losing, it's a well-located stock, really works for students at a price point that is affordable. And I think that is something which more and more we're gonna have to do because development, new build development is not, necessarily sustainable and necessarily it doesn't stack from an investment perspective but some of these projects do so really keen to to kind of keep being involved in that and see if we can take that forward

SPEAKER_06: 1:12:10

great yeah I did love the focus that you had on ESG actually when you purchased those properties how it was already factored in to the underwriting the fact that you were going

SPEAKER_07: 1:12:20

to

SPEAKER_06: 1:12:20

To do a big sustainability play. 100%. Yeah, that's key. Scott, what do you think?

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:26

I think, yeah, I agree with everything that's been said there. I think AI is obviously massive, and I'm quite excited about PBSA over the next few years because what's great about PBSA versus real estate in general, real estate's really slow, really slow moving. It takes years. And higher ed as well. It's still paper, you know, still some contracts and wet signatures and all of this kind of stuff. But because of our cohort and our customer base, there's an expectation that tech is there and innovation is just fundamental to those people and what we do as a business. So I think we've got a real opportunity as PBSA to actually do things that otherwise won't exist in the wider real estate world so with AI and with just tech in general you know building controls and various other things that are coming through and I think our customer base is really receptive to that so from that point of view it's really exciting I think I agree about the first and second gen stock that's going to have to go through a whole round of upgrading and just a bit more flexibility probably over a five year timeline I think in the UK particularly the Renters Rights Act is going to change the landscape for the rental market overall. So I think we're just going to inevitably see a bit more flexibility having to come back into PBSA over the next few years. But more of the same, really.

SPEAKER_06: 1:13:45

I agree with that. And Soraya to close us out.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:50

I think for me, it has to be a little bit more focused on product. I think we've all moved to a very homogenous product type. We've not been innovating enough. So I think for Nido, we're definitely looking at that and how we can just be a bit different considering the needs of Gen Alpha who are going to be coming through and how they want to live. Maybe we're not doing things in the best way right now. We've just all copied each other, really. And we're focusing a lot on amenity spaces and we need to go back to bedroom design and actual living.

SPEAKER_06: 1:14:22

That was a real focus for the last, you know, the few sessions we've had here. Actually, you know, we've had cinema rooms, we've had karaoke booths, etc. What are we going to do about the rooms? And I do think you're right. And

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:34

every survey we do, what do they want most? Study rooms. Yeah. So it's, you know, it's a great gimmick. Of course, we've got rooftop pools in Madrid, brilliant for marketing and your final close at the end of the tour. But ultimately, where they spend the most time is in their rooms and they want good sleep. And that's the thing that's coming out.

SPEAKER_06: 1:14:54

Amazing. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for such an insightful conversation. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I think our listeners will too. Do, if you enjoyed today's episode, do please subscribe and like Housed, a shared living podcast. We will have more discussions discussions next week but thank you very much to our guests.