The British Property Federation and the Association for Rental Living have brought together industry leaders to create the taskforce
The Build-to-Rent Taskforce is comprised of 24 industry professionals.
The taskforce’s purpose is to promote build-to-rent, protect consumers, and help build public and private partnerships to increase home building.
The Build-to-Rent Taskforce will support the BTR and SFR sectors
Aside from the BPF and ARL, the taskforce has developers, operators, advisers, and investors to work on the build-to-rent (BTR) and single-family rental (SFR) sectors.
The build-to-rent sector has built 123,000 homes since 2012, and another 158,960 are either under construction or in the planning phase. Despite impressive numbers, this only makes up 2% of all the privately rented homes in the UK.
With government housing targets, the Build-to-Rent Taskforce believe that it is important that the BTR sector and SFR sector are given more recognition and importance and that planning decision-makers recognise how it can help in meeting housing targets.
Data from Savills and the BPF show that, despite struggling for a couple of years, the number of BTR and SFR homes that have received planning permission has increased by 35% over the past 12 months.
Government targets “require all parts of the housing market to be operating efficiently”
Ian Fletcher, firector of policy at the British Property Federation, said: “Build-to-Rent has made significant progress over the last decade, unlocking institutional investment to become an integral part of the housing market. However, the Government’s ambitious housing targets require all parts of the housing market to be operating efficiently and effectively.
“While Build-to-Rent has diversified out of core cities and into single-family housing, and need for rental homes is well-identified, very few local planning authorities yet have dedicated BTR policies. The Taskforce is seeking to ensure that local authorities and planning decision-makers have a thorough understanding of how the sector is evolving and the contribution it makes to community and regeneration. Against the backdrop of the Government considering its 10-year housing strategy, there is a huge amount of investment interested in helping fund the chronic undersupply of new rental homes, which the Taskforce will seek to harness.”
Brendan Geraghty, CEO of the Association for Rental Living, said: “The Association for Rental Living, whose membership includes investors and operators who own and manage 83% of UK Build to Rent homes, welcomes the creation of this Taskforce. It is critically important to raise awareness of Build to Rent’s potential to deliver homes and attract investment, to take this message to national and local government and create an environment that unlocks the potential for much-needed new homes. We must remove any factors that limit the potential scale of this delivery or undermine the confidence of investors.
“With a key focus of the Taskforce being on protecting consumers, the BTR Code of Practice and Customer Charter that we are creating will be central to defining and confirming the high standards of customer treatment as well as the quality and sustainability of homes essential to meet housing need.”
Last month, the BPF released a statement saying that the proposed five-year settlement for social housing does not go far enough, as social housing construction currently sits at 43,400 and the government’s targets require 145,000 new homes per year.
Furthermore, 1.29m homes are currently on waiting lists.
Therefore, the BPF argue that a ten-year settlement would be much more beneficial, creating more alignment between rent prices and comparable properties.
