As the UK’s rental sector changes, a new breed of innovators is supporting landlords to maximise the potential of their assets. Innovative build to rent revenue generation partner Houzen is one such example.
Houzen has made a name for itself by supporting the growing number of build to rent (BTR) operators to generate more revenue on their schemes and speed up their portfolio performance by 30-50%.
Key to the company’s success is its ability to find premium tenants fast and pair those who are prepared to pay for the BTR sector’s hotel-style services with the right accommodation. The company secures short and long lets up to five times more rapidly than any other player in the market, specialising in leasing out entire blocks.
For BTR schemes, Houzen fills vacancies to an incredibly short timescale, even when hundreds of units come on stream at the same time. The result can mean a significant revenue boost for the operator in question – and its investors, as Houzen’s founder, Saurabh Saxena, explains:
“Institutional portfolios lose on average 30-50% revenue just by not leasing or selling fast enough. Our emphasis on speed turns this around – but not at the expense of the quality of the tenants we find. Our matching engine considers socioeconomic characteristics and willingness to pay for the ‘added extras’ that BTR schemes provide when pairing tenants and properties. This means that our demographic analysis delivers suitable tenant-property matches, with higher longevity and lifetime value.”
Houzen’s focus is primarily on the London market, which British Property Federation (BPF) figures show is the epicentre of demand for build to rent accommodation. London accounts for 73,974 build to rent units (including completed units, those under construction and those with planning permission), while the entire rest of the country accounts for just 66,116.
With the pace of build to rent development increasing so significantly, operators have never been under more pressure to find tenants fast for the homes they’re building. Based on London’s units alone, and with an average rent of £2,000 pcm, the average value of the rent rolling in per annum is £1.776 billion. Houzen’s ability to save operators at least 30% on that, means additional revenue generation of £532 million!
Understandably, the industry’s big players are sitting up and taking notice. Notable names to have already entrusted Houzen with their vacancies include Greystar, Grainer Plc, Invesco, Kennedy Wilson, The Collective and Quintain.
The Houzen model harnesses the power of technology, curating and aggregating Big Data while blending it with an essential human element. The company intelligently pulls applicant data from 2,000+ partners globally to find the best tenant for each vacancy. It’s a solution that delivers impressive results.
In Ilford, Houzen leased 300 units for a large US BTR developer in just nine months, against a lease out target of 15 months. For a major US BTR developer in Vauxhall, the company took just 10 months to lease 118 units, against a target of 15 months. The speed of the lease outs and avoidance of voids at these schemes saved the developers almost £2 million and around £1 million respectively.
Saxena said:
“Build to rent is still a relatively new concept for the majority of the UK’s tenants. Houzen uses demographic models and advanced statistics to educate and pre-sell BTR properties to high-value, premium applicants who appreciate the advantages that come with hotel-inspired living and who are willing to pay extra in order to enjoy those benefits.”