Housed: The Shared Living Podcast

Why Marketplaces aren't just for PBSA, Is Labour Making the Housing Crisis Worse for Renters and What Exactly Is Subscription Living?

• Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee and Daniel Smith • Season 5 • Episode 9

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Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee and Dan Smith are back in the latest episode of Housed, to discuss:  
- Marketplaces & university accommodation
- Their reaction to the Budget - is Labour making the housing crisis worse for Renters?
- And what exactly is subscription living?

Stay up to date on Housed podcast via its LinkedIn page.

Dan Smith is Founder of RESI Consultancy and Co-Founder of Verbaflo.AI Good Management.

Sarah Canning and Deenie Lee are Directors and Co-Founders of The Property Marketing Strategists - Elevating Marketing in Property.

Thank you to our season four sponsors:
MyStudentHalls - Find your ideal student accommodation across the UK.
Utopi - The smart building platform helping real estate owners protect the value of their assets.
Washstation - Leading provider of laundry solutions for Communal and Campus living throughout the UK and Ireland.




SPEAKER_03:

Hello everyone and welcome back to Hands the Shared Living Podcast. This is the penultimate episode in this season, which is our fifth, but we will be back for one more week, which will be a special QA episode. So please keep the questions coming in via WhatsApp, voice note, and email. And most importantly, please contact us if you think there is anything we've missed talking about in the last few weeks of the season. We also have a very special episode for some amazing people from the sector in the lead up to Christmas. But today, let's get on with our show. I'm Deanie from the Property Marketing Strategists. And I'm Dan from Resi Consultancy and Verberflow AI.

SPEAKER_04:

And I'm Sarah Cunning from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_03:

And first, a word from our headline sponsor.

SPEAKER_01:

Season five of Housed, sponsored by mystienthalls.com. List your properties commission-free and reach thousands of students searching for their university home.

SPEAKER_03:

Dan and the team from MyStudent Halls have been supporters of House since the beginning, and we are incredibly grateful that they're here once again as headline sponsors of season five. And we are pleased to say they will be joining us again in season six. So huge thank you for continuing to partner with us. And a big thank you too to Washstation and Utopia for coming back and sponsoring House once again next season. We'll hear more from them later. First, Dan, I think you had a busy week last week. You were both at the Prop Tech Awards and Cubo. Can you give us an update from both those events?

SPEAKER_06:

I can. Yes. I I'd love to be winding down for Christmas, and it is the absolute opposite of that. I am ramping up for Christmas. Last week was, it was yes, was the UK Prop Tech Association Awards held in London in Cotton Garden. And I haven't been to one before, didn't know what to expect, but it was quite a casual affair. You sort of rock up to a bar, and then there is a a stage there where they are basically talking about the uh prop tech sector and the state of it, and then they launch into some of the awards. It's actually quite refreshing, I'll be honest, because it's it's quite it's done quite quick. It's not the sort of black tie some of these awards can be. And so yeah, I found it it was quite nice to just spend a few hours there with the Verbaflow team, VP and Vicas, and meeting a lot of people within the sector. There were some reasonably familiar faces, Bradley Bartlett, who's uh a recruiter within the sector, but also uh James Ragg from Student Cribs, who was up for some awards, and and then Verberflow was up for an award as well. And Shock Horror we didn't win, but uh I'd practised my disappointed face, so wasn't really expecting to. Company called Watergate won it, and I didn't feel it was necessary to sort of storm the stage button like like Kanye West. I actually didn't even know we were up for it, to be honest with you. The ones that we're sort of really quite keen on are Property Week. So fingers crossed that you know we get one of our three uh three awards that we're up for there, but it was just a really good affair, and I think that what was really clear is that the government are really willing on PropTech. You know, there's quite a bit of investment because UK Prop Tech Association is now part of uh the BPF, British Property Federation, which is now called RE UK, Real Estate UK, just to make it very clear what all of these acronyms are. And the reason that we're making these acronyms clear is that we didn't get selected for the podcast awards because we have far too many acronyms, PBSA, BTR, whatever else. So we're trying to be trying to keep it simple. But yeah, the government are are actually taking an active role in some of the investment in some of these prop techs, which is which is really good to see, whether it's through an accelerator or whatever that might be. But overall, just yeah, it was a was a really good affair. Mostly I would say BTR, so very little uh in terms of student there. But but like I said, good to see James Ragg from student cribs there, and then on to Cubo, which is the university business offices, effectively. So anyone who works in universities, the sort of commercial sector, whether it be conferencing events or accommodation, catering. And so I was invited by Melissa Brown and the team there, she's the chair of of uh of Cubo to do a bit of a keynote. And I was given carte blanche. So they said I could talk about pretty much whatever I wanted, which it can be a bit of a risky game depending on who the audience is. And I had to, I ran it past them, obviously. I didn't just want to go completely rogue, but it was about future-proofing university accommodation, and I think that is one of the more challenging sectors within student accommodation, whether it's you know, BTR, co-living, student HMO, PBSA, commuter students, or actual university halls. I think there are quite a few headwinds there. I don't want them, I don't want universities to sell the engine to pay for petrol. That was one of my slides, because I do worry that it's it's such a it's such an asset to have university accommodation that you can control. And I think that a lot of universities are just thinking, right, we'll just get you know get into bed with an operator, we'll do a design, build, fund, operate, um, sort of joint venture partnership. Uh, and sometimes that can work really, really well. We've seen some really good ones, and we've seen some that haven't worked quite so well, where prices have been kept irrationally high in certain markets when PBSA has been much more agile. So universities have some significant voids out there. It's the worst year that I can remember, um, other than COVID, but actually, even then, because this is a normal sales cycle, I think it's been a real struggle. And so, so yeah, I talked a bit about the future direction of travel. We talked about 2030, which I know we talked about on the last podcast as well. But it feels to me like university halls are actually one step ahead of PBSA because they don't have as much invested in that side of things. They aren't looking for those investor returns and therefore they don't don't need to be careful with what they say. And, you know, they they ultimately didn't look too shocked at me talking about 2030 and the fact that we're going to have a dip in the number of uh 18-year-olds that drops off by 20% over 10 years. So from where it is now, uh it'll it'll have dropped by 20 to 25% by 2040 after we hit 2030. That's going to have all kinds of uh issues uh and and throw up all kinds of challenges for the sector. So we talked about that. We talked about AI at length, and and obviously I was able to you know talk about Verb flow and the difference that that can make because staffing is a major problem for universities. They can't get the quality or the calibre of staff on a seasonal basis. They've got some brilliant people working for them year-round, but hiring up students to train them up, to then pay them, to get their systems licenses, etc. We talked about the systems architectures and how complicated and and overburdened they were. I had to be a little careful with what I was saying. We had Star X, uh Starres and Kinetics and Levanda uh in uh exhibiting, and so I was reasonably measured with talking about legacy systems, shall we say? But I yeah, I was I was also able to then talk about some of the reasoning behind PBSA's success, because it has been a success at the expense of university halls to a certain extent, and one of the reasons that I think people hadn't really appreciated was the fact that international education agents sell university courses to international students, and they make a huge commission, you know, between sort of 10 to 20 percent, depending on the course of tuition fees each year. So that's a whacking great commission there. And what happened during COVID is that they started to realize actually we need to start thinking about marginal gains here. What other services can we sell into these students? Because we're not making as much revenue as we normally would. And some of that is the nature of the market maturing as well, the international education agent market. And so what they've started to do is where they weren't getting accommodation commission from the universities, they've started diverting students away from university halls and into PBSA and BTR. They've either done that direct through partnerships with operators, or they've done that uh with partnerships with marketplaces. So rather than you know, your normal rite of passage, which is you do your application for your course, you get accepted onto your course, you then automatically go into the university halls of residence, or at least that's you know what is pushed to you by the agent typically, you they are starting to be diverted away into PBSA because PBSA or the marketplaces are paying them. And that has been a bit of a wake-up call, I think. There were there were very few people in the room that actually really knew that that was happening. Now, I talked about this 18 months ago or so at ICEF when we were uh all in Amsterdam, and again, that was a bit of a revelation there. There were a few marketplaces there saying, quiet, please don't talk about this because you know it's really something that we we don't really want to talk about. But yeah, that was that was I there was some genuinely there were some gasps when when I was presenting some of those slides. So uh yeah, hopefully it added a bit of value. I certainly you know enjoyed the feedback I got there and then.

SPEAKER_04:

But on that topic, Dan, we have spoken to universities about it, and I think because the commission is so high for the courses, some of the ones that we've spoken to are almost unbelieving that an agent would bother to refer accommodation when they might only get£200,£300 commission per room. And we're like, no, no, this happens, this is a thing, you know, people, you know, make you know, have whole companies that do this thing. And I think there has been a little bit of kind of naivety about that happening, you know, and I'm really glad that you you called it out because you know, for a lot of students, being amongst other first-year students or other postgraduate students on campus, you know, can be the the best experience that the that they'll get, you know. So diverting them into to PBSA that might be a bit further away from from campus might be amongst other you know, students from other universities, you know, it's great to have an option, you know, but if the the the university shouldn't have void beds if their students are being diverted some somewhere else, that that should never be the you know the outcome.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, I I think the other thing that was really interesting from all that, because marketplaces give with one hand and take away with the other. Now what my part of my messaging as well to the university halls was go and list with these marketplaces. You have to start paying them commission. And you know, that'll be music to the ears of every marketplace out there, and obviously concerning for university halls because they're going to be having to give away more revenue. But what would you rather have? Would you rather have you know slightly less revenue, give away 5% of that, or would you rather have a void room where you're not getting anything? No, I'd rather. So I would hope that we would start to see more university halls advertising on the marketplace platforms, and and I think that's also key for AEO, uh, which is answer engine optimization. So basically, you've got SEO search engine optimization, which is about your good typical Google search, which is quite old school now, and then AEO, which is focused on you know what ChatGPT sees and what Chat GPT is using as a source for the answers that it's giving about if you search, find me the best student accommodation in Bournemouth, for example. If you asked for the sources straight away, the number one by a country mile would be student crowd. So fair play, Paul, and Thule, they've um they've really got a very credible platform there that is becoming the oracle of uh all things student accommodation. And then it would list marketplaces, and that's because they've got the sheer volume, and then further down there would be university halls, and then further down beyond that would be PBSA operators again because they just don't have the scale. So I I think there's a balance here. I do think university halls need to be listing with marketplaces. I would do that quite carefully, I'd be quite strategic about it and make sure that it's also done via agents as well. So those key agents that they've got, where if you search on uh a university accommodation uh sorry, a university website, you'll see that there are agents listed there, whether it be Edwise in India or IDP or the Chopra's uh Chopra Group or New Orient or whoever it might be, they're all listed on those websites. Well, each of those agent partners should be contracted to make sure that they are passing accommodation as a first preference to the university. There is just there is just no excuse for that not going into the contract. And if that student then really doesn't want it, then you can say, right, okay, well no, let's look at PBSA. But there's still ways that universities can make money off that too. We've seen several universities do that, charge commission for leads and any you know leads that actually confirm. So yeah, I think there's there's just a lot more commercialisation with regards to the revenue process at university halls, with regards to the marketing and the sales funnel for sure.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and I totally agree with that, Dan. I think that's what I was going to say, is that actually there is other ways that universities can be have be more controlling in this conversation. And what we've discussed in the past before is actually packaging up courses with accommodation and getting kind of preferential rates that way. So actually, when the education agent is selling that course in, it's already attached to accommodation and it's part of that thing. So I think there is, as you say, I think there's more ways that universities can approach this from a commercial aspect, whether that's feeding into what the contracts are signing or packaging in things up or but you know, being aware that it's going on and that it's happening is a step in the right direction, and then it's something that can be controlled. So that was really interesting. And I do like what you said about the Prop Tech Awards. I think there is, you know, we're all gonna be when this has gone out, we're all gonna be have just come back from the Property Week Awards. And as much as it's great and it's a great evening, there's not as much time to speak and chat to people because of the length of the award. So I think that short, kind of informal awards is a is a positive thing. And we'll just have a quick break to hear from our sponsors and we'll move on to our next topic. This episode is brought to you by Utopia, the smart building platform that helps real estate owners protect the value of their assets.

SPEAKER_05:

Utopia turns real-time data into adding data, making buildings better for people, the planet, and profit.

SPEAKER_02:

If you're in asset management or operations and care about performance, Utopia is your essential partner. Find out more at utopia.co.uk and that's utopi.co.uk.

SPEAKER_03:

A big thank you again to Utopia, who is going to be joining us again in season six. We're so grateful for their ongoing support of house, which means we can bring it to you every week. So thank you. So last week was a big week in politics because we had our UK budget. I kind of know what I feel about it, but Dan, are you gonna be super positive about this budget?

SPEAKER_06:

What do you think? I'm willing them on, they are just failing at every turn, and and not just within the sector that we're in. I I can't remember feeling quite so hopeless about, especially a Labour government, and yeah, I just don't have any good news to report. Yes, I know that if 500,000 children have been pulled out of poverty with the with scrapping the the um two-child benefit cap. But beyond that, and that one particular headline that very much appeases the you know the left of the party, and and I I do appreciate, of course, that's a positive. Anytime we're doing that, it's a positive. But where was the other good news? And why are they squeezing the middle so hard? And I think that you know, when when you look at some of the things that that were mentioned, and we can we can start going through each of the points in turn, but I think there is a real there is a real chasm between the Labour Party at the moment and the electorate and the sentiment of the electorate, not just the sentiment of you know the Labour Party or potential Labour voters, and that's not me saying that I think we should be appeasing the far right and reform and and all of that, but I just think they're lacking in real-world policies that they can communicate effectively and that are going to make a positive difference. They're either not talking about the fact that we all really need to play our part, this is what it looks like now, this is what it will look like in the future, this is why we're doing it. And I think it's because there's no real leadership, there's no there's no leadership that you can get behind or buy into. You know, Rachel Reeves is on thin ice, Keir Starmer is showing that unfortunately he is absolutely not adept at personality politics in the same way that we were hoping that there might be, you know, Tony Blair kind of character coming in. And and you know, for for all his faults, Tony Blair was an incredible politician, very adept at you know, the the sort of international and geopolitical as well as the domestic politics. Keir Starmer is unfortunately not nailing any of this. And it it then creeps down into the cabinet of they're all you know, just just think about the 1.5 million homes target. The likelihood is on current projections they'll be at least 40 to 50 percent shy of that come the end of the parliament, at which point Steve Reed needs to resign because that's what he's pledged. And I I think there's just such a lack of reality in in where we're up to. I'm I'm rapidly losing faith, to be completely honest.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it it was disappointing, and I think just looking at it from a uh perspective from kind of Howes and our listeners, it feels very much that the focus was on that if we build all these houses, then that alleviates a lot of the problems. But there was nothing in it seemingly to help build those houses. So it's just on a women up prayer.

SPEAKER_04:

But also, I was thinking about this, and you know, I was thinking all the things that we've talked about that could be problematic for landlords moving ahead, and obviously imposing a tax increase on landlords' rental income from April 2027, where rental profits will be taxed at higher, higher rates. So obviously, you know, we know that they're they they have to raise more money. So I'm not I'm not necessarily surprised at that, but it's like actually those those homes could end up for sale if landlords decide they don't want to take the hit on that, along with the Renters Rights Act, along with increasing um the environmental standards and the actual property standards in AWABS law, they might decide. So so technically those properties won't necessarily come out of circulation, but they may not be available to people to rent. So it's kind of like actually, you and and also to our points over the last well year and a half of recording housed, there's a massive black hole in large houses that older people are living in. And I feel like actually, you don't necessarily need to build 1.5 million homes because a lot of the homes are already there. They could I thought that they might um reduce stamp duty for like over 70-year-olds or something to get them moving. That wasn't there, but also they're kind of not, I guess not, I don't know if it's respecting is not the word, but I guess not acknowledging the important role that landlords play in housing people. So a lot of those problems with the housing crisis actually, I think they might have made worse.

SPEAKER_03:

I think even the Office for Budget Responsibility have said that the changes risk contribute contributing to a steady long-term rise in rents. So that's already gonna have an impact. And I was also thinking about the the mansion tax, which on the surface probably sounds like a good thing if you can afford it. But there's a lot of people, especially in London, that are gonna hit that and probably sell up. So that's just pushing more people into those homes that families need. And actually, it's just gonna exacerbate the problem. Yeah, I mean so it's kind of not not really thinking it all through.

SPEAKER_06:

Well, but this is it, but they've had enough of an opportunity and they've got some there's some really credible bodies that that they could listen to, and it's almost like they're they're suspicious of any of these bodies. And I know that Ben Beadle from the National Residential Landlords Association is just I I see the videos he puts on like LinkedIn, and it's it's just he's so frustrated. Everybody is so frustrated with the approach the government is taking. And like I said, I am willing Labour on here. I really I really want them to nail it, but they are failing at every turn, and it's things like the international student levy. I mean, what what the what is that gonna do? And then you think about how they are almost demonising residential landlords, and actually renting is one of the solutions to the housing crisis here, and I think that they talked about it being a budget for benefit street, and I I I do worry that that is the way that everything is going to continue to be perceived, and maybe that's a calculated risk, and and they think that they're they're going to uh they're they're going to win the next election by focusing on you know on people who are potentially on benefits, but either way, everyone else gets squeezed in in the meantime.

SPEAKER_04:

But that doesn't make any sense because they haven't raised local housing allowance. So how housing benefit basically it remains fro frozen. So, but if Deany's right and the rent is going to go up because there's going to be less homes to rent and landlords are having additional expenses, then they're going to have to give more people housing benefit because they won't be able to afford the rent. And that's been self-fulfilling, basically.

SPEAKER_03:

Unless they can build people houses, but they can't build more houses because they've not focused on building more houses. And this is the thing, it's kind of it's all it's all focused on something that they've said themselves is extremely difficult to do.

SPEAKER_06:

And they they kept saying we've we've sorted the planning that we've sorted the planning regime out, like we've thrown 300 extra people at the planning regime, extra planning offices. Bullshit, that's not going to touch the sides. It genuinely won't. You could put that into London, and that might do a bit of that might make a bit of difference, get London building. But but then it's the archaic processes behind that, of course, then the Building Safety Act. So many people I speak to now are like we aren't touching anything over a certain height because we do not want to fall into uh any of the gateways and and uh and this, that, and the other. I it just there is far too little foresight, it is governing by headlines at the moment. And just another thing that came up at Cubo, actually, was me saying, like, I don't think the direction of travel for higher education is positive in in many ways. Now I've uh and and that's a really sweeping statement, and just to clarify that, what I mean is that there are a few places that are saying, well, you know, we should see an increase in international students and domestic students. It's more and more students should keep going to university. But the government right now are saying, scrap that, Tony Blair was wrong, 50% of school leavers do not need to go to university. Um, what we want to do is we think two-thirds of uh of school leavers from the age of 16 should go on to some kind of next level education, not necessarily university. Now, I think given their tendency to focus on uh apprenticeships, the conversation at each of these universities, uh from with each of these universities at Cubo was, well, where are you gonna get the jobs from? Because you need a job at the end of it. You need a sponsor from a you need a company to sponsor you going right the way through university. And I think that is going to be a major problem that those roles are going to dry up. Apprenticeships are going to become absolute gold dust because in an era of AI, everyone needs to be so focused on what they want to do at the end of their degree rather than, oh, I'll just do French and politics or I'll just do business studies and then see what happens. I don't think you're going to be able to afford to do that within the next three to five years because you're going to need to know exactly what your role is going to be out the back of your degree. And the government are not helping things there. They've put another 725 million to go towards uh making the training of under 25 apprentices free for small and medium-sized firms. Fine. How can you support apprenticeship degrees? That 725 million will go very, very fast. If you're really trying to ramp up, you know, if you're trying to wind down the number of students going to university to do some spurious courses, uh, and you're trying to ramp up actual, you know, leading into which which I agree with, by the way. I think apprenticeships are going to be a very viable option for everyone who leaves school. And I know they're working very well for people uh I know now. But yeah, again, just a real a real lack of strategy around higher education, around housing, which are the two key things that we tend to focus on. And they have not listened to anyone. Every single body that I speak to is like, well, we've tried lobbying, but you know, they aren't listening. So yeah, just a huge frustration all around from my side.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, there is a strategy, they're just not being very transparent about it, and it doesn't feel it doesn't feel like a strategy that is supporting higher education. It feels like it's one of saying higher education is going to be for an elite number of subjects, which we will say is the ones that we need. And yes, we'll put that funding through to apprenticeships, which you know, I I support apprenticeships, but I don't think I think there's a way that higher education apprenticeships don't need to compete. Actually, it's just another way to study, and actually you can do that through your university and through an employer. But like you say, Dan, you do need an employer when it comes to an apprenticeship. And, you know, in many ways, it's great that they're going to spend a lot of money on making training free for many small businesses to hire an apprentice, but they've got to be able to afford to hire an apprentice. And there was nothing in that budget to support small businesses, small and medium-sized businesses, and they can't afford it. They're already shouting and saying we can't afford to run our businesses. So I it it's just uh it's damaging higher education whilst trying to build up apprenticeships, which is great, but like you say, you need businesses growing and being productive to enable that to happen. So it was a difficult week for the government, and I think it'll be carry on being a difficult week and a difficult year and a difficult next year, and we'll see how it goes. But I think you know that there was there's some things that are going to have a definite impact on higher education, and I think it's something that we will watch as we move for move move forward. But we'll take another quick break to hear from Washstation.

SPEAKER_00:

Washstation proudly sponsored this episode of Housed. We provide best in class laundry solutions that complement your buildings. Washstation. Smart, green, clean.

SPEAKER_03:

Washstation have been fantastic partners of House and will be back to support us once again for season six. We are hugely grateful. Thank you again to Wash Station. So our final topic was something that we picked up by using ChatGPT to discuss, to find out what's going on in shared living and what can we talk about. So when we did a little bit of a search, we were brought on a new term called subscription living, which I hadn't heard of before, and I don't think either of my co-hosts had either. And when I first read it, we kind of thought got a bit excited about oh, this might be exciting. What does this mean? Is this a new innovative way of living and renting by kind of taking a diverse range of rental products and subscribing to the bits that you want and the bits you don't want? But sadly, according to ChatGPT, it's really just co-living, renting as it is. So we've just coined another new term when we've got enough new terms as it is that most people don't really understand. But I guess we wanted to have a quick discussion about actually if we did make subscription living something different, what would that be and what would its benefits be?

SPEAKER_04:

I was thinking that at the base level, with no subscription services, you've got HMOs. So you rent either our whole property with your friends or you rent a room in a house, but you you don't get anything else, you know, on top of that. That's kind of the basic. So then if you move to PBSA or university accommodation, you could have that as your basic model and everything else is an add-on. If you want the gym, you pay for the gym. If you want to attend social events, you pay for social events. If you want to use laundry, you pay for laundry, which you do anyway in some places, etc., etc. So I was thinking that could be a way to give the students what they want. We know from our youth forum, they've told us that time and time again, they don't want to be paying for things that they don't want to pay for, that there's very little choice. And it could make it really affordable. However, I was thinking, how would anyone manage this? The systems aren't geared up for it, the staffing aren't. How do you police areas you know that some people have paid for that some people haven't? Do you end up with a two-tier kind of tenant base within a building where some can afford the upgrades and some can't? A lot of the time it's just because they don't want them, it's not necessarily because they can't. Yeah, I don't I don't know. I know that some services are already kind of add-ons, and particularly in BTR, kind of a lot of the social events are kind of paid sort of upgrades. But across the shared living sector, I like the idea don't know if it can be executed.

SPEAKER_06:

I think it can be. I think it can be. I think there's a but But realistically, what would that look like? Like, would it it's primarily the gym and maybe some sort of exclusive meeting rooms and study space and you know how do you how do you separate that? Maybe even moving into you know discounts and things like that or events. I have seen it. I have seen it. Like I know that in trying out and mobilizing their concept, I think it was either UHouse or House of Social, but the Vita group, they sort of launched with some really, you know, really reasonable rental prices for central Manchester for those assets. And and I if anyone hasn't been to the sort of a Circle Square or in and around Manchester to those Vita properties, do take a trip. It's very, very impressive. But because they were mobilizing, I think they wanted to showcase that they have you know reasonable low rents or you know uh uh lower than I think the the premium end as people would normally expect. And then through mobilization, I think there was a you know that there was a subscription model where you could say, I'll just have the rent, I'm not gonna use any of the facilities or anything like or services or events, and and that's fine, keep it at that. I've I've just checked the websites though. It looks like now they are very much, you know, uh doing everything included. So I'm assuming that that model either didn't work and it maybe created a two-tier sort of society within it, or that it was more hassle than it's worth from an operational perspective. So I do think there is something to be said for allowing people to say, look, I'm I'm not gonna have, you know, maybe I'm not gonna have the breakfast, or maybe I'm not gonna have the or use the gym. I I think there are potential, you know, savings there where you could say to a resident, fine, don't pay for it. That's all right, you can take that off your rent, or uh you don't have to opt into that. But yeah, Sarah, my worry would then be obviously you're creating a two-tier society within each of your assets or within your brand. So quite how realistic it is, I I don't know. I just think that I think that it's worth trying. I think it's worth worth looking at. And maybe a tech focused operator who isn't really too worried about staffing or you know, really creating that community could do that. And I don't I'm not being disparaging by saying who you know an operator that doesn't care about community. I mean think about like a pure gym where you don't there's quite often no one on reception and you just get your card, you log in and away you go. Well, you know, why would you not potentially look at doing that for uh for each of your attitude? Same for some hotels where you you know you have to pay for gym access and this, that, and the other. We do need to be thinking about what that looks like, and and we could learn some lessons from hospitality there, I think. But how much is that going to be driving down the cost? Is that the focus of it? Is that what we should be thinking? We have subscription living, you've got your basic, and then you can get all of your added added extras on there. I don't know. It it is an interesting concept. I like I said, I know it's been tried, it hasn't been continued, so maybe there's a reason for that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean it does feel like something that you could use for bills in that you could do all-inclusive bills and I kind of pay the one rent, or actually no, I opt to go on a subscription level and actually I'll pay for my bills as I go, thanks, and see how I get on. And that feel that the technology needs to be in the building to enable to have that. But yeah, it'll be interesting. But I will say I did just ask ChatGPT who coined the term subscription living, and I got a good question. I couldn't find any credible source that definitively identifies a single person who coined the term subscription living or subscription-based living. Here's why I found and why the origin seems murky. So maybe ChatGPT just coined the phrase.

SPEAKER_04:

They made it up, it doesn't exist, but it was interesting.

SPEAKER_03:

I wasn't you heard it here first, I guess.

SPEAKER_04:

Although what I was thinking was, I can imagine what would happen is in the end, operators would just go, here's an incentive, get it all for free anyway. I think it would be in the too hard box, and if sales were going tough, they would just throw it all in anyway, and then it would end up being special offer, free gym, free upgraded Wi-Fi, free access to the roof terrace, etc. And they would just include it all anyway.

SPEAKER_06:

I think we're just too far away from it at the moment. I mean, yes, you could you could break down the the billing from uh you know, uh have a meter in each room, that kind of thing for the utilities, and that is feasible because there are people that are very focused on their usage, um, or whether it's electricity or whatever, but but doing that would probably involve too much of a capex, too much of a cost in build, and then at that point your rents, you know, aren't as affordable as uh as maybe they should be. So so yeah, I I I think there's there's something in it we could definitely learn from learn from hospitality who charge for meeting rooms and printing and Wi-Fi and you know uh and and gym access at times, or certainly breakfast, but we're in a bit of a tricky spot when it comes to PBSA and BTR to a certain extent. There's some BTR properties and PBSA that are doing great and wouldn't have to worry about using that as an incentive or you know, basically you using the all-inclusive living as a real selling point. But I would say the majority do. Everyone does have to think, right, let's just make it easy for people to book because you know it is not that easy out there to fill your beds. And if you're starting to separate things, that becomes extremely unwieldy when it comes to you know selling it to residents, whether it's BTR, co-living or PBSA.

SPEAKER_03:

So we'll watch this space to see if subscription living becomes a thing, and you can say that you heard it here first. So I think that's all for today. A big thank you to my student halls for being our headline sponsor for the season. Your support is hugely appreciated. And of course, thank you to Utopian Wash Station. We are also grateful for your support. As we said at the beginning, the last episode of this series will be next week, and of 2025, and it will be our special QA episode. So if you have a question you would like Sarah Dan to answer, or a question we can get an expert to answer, or there's a topic that you would like us discuss, please email hello at housepodcast.com, or send any of us a WhatsApp, a voice note, or an email, or speak to us if you come see us. We want to cover all the different ethic classes with Internet Living, so we want your questions about co-living, BTM, PBSA, university accommodation, HMOs and rented late living or subscription living. The juicier the better. So we will see you and answer your questions next week.