Welcome to the final interview in this UK Build to Rent Q&A series. We’re closing the series with our final Moda Q&A. Speaking with Oscar Brooks, Director of Brand, about his thoughts on sustainability & development longevity. If you’ve missed any of the series, you can catch up here.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our respondents over the past four months. We’re very grateful & incredibly pleased with the positive response & input provided from all of our interviewees. To commemorate our first Q&A series, we will soon be offering a free downloadable Ebook containing all of the responses, so keep an eye out to make sure you get your copy.
Moda is the UK’s fastest growing housing brand pioneering positive change in the residential space and setting a precedence in the Build to Rent (“BTR”) sector with its Next Generation Neighbourhoods.
We are making a meaningful and sustained contribution to addressing the UK’s housing crisis with the provision of high quality professionally managed rental homes which are becoming increasingly popular as people adapt to a new Covid-19 way of living. Our Next Generation Neighbourhoods are innovative, pioneering and technology-enabled residential neighbourhoods focused on creating supportive, inclusive, and intergenerational communities. We provide exceptional new places via adaptive building design, extraordinary public realm and the provision of amenity rich facilities which are accessible to all the residents of our new homes with health and well-being at the heart of our approach.
About
Oscar Brooks is a founding member of the Moda Living team.
He is Director of Brand and leads on new acquisitions and business development.
With 13+ years’ experience in the real estate industry working across residential, commercial and mixed-use projects he has supported in the creation of Moda Livings £2.5bn pipeline.
Oscar has worked on several high value partnerships and UK market firsts such as a technology partnership with Samsung, a mobility partnership with Uber and resident services partnerships with the likes of Selfridges.
His current focus is driving the evolution of the brand, customer journey, ESG strategy and supporting the growth of a market leading digital infrastructure for best-in-class customer service.
Q: In a time where climate change is at such a pivotal point how important a role do you believe the BTR industry has and why?
A: We have a huge role to play. The wider property industry has a duty of care to the environment and we should constantly be looking to raise the bar when it comes to sustainability. As creators of the new world we must be custodians of the old and on that basis, we need to be looking at everything in our power to drive quality, awareness and ownership of the problems the industry creates and encounters. As a business, we have big plans in place to support these beliefs in 2021.
Q: Technology is ever changing – how do you ensure your developments stay current and competitively up to date?
A: As a business that merges traditional community values with innovative design, construction, and technology, it’s our duty to make a mark on the rental sector. We realise more than ever the fundamental role technology plays in the day-to-day experiences of our residents, and how crucial it is to the future success and sustainability of our sector. Technology plays a vital role in every area of our Next Generation Neighbourhoods.
Our approach to technology is helping us to set the agenda for the future of residential, building the smart, next generation neighbourhoods of the future and setting a precedence in the BTR space more broadly. With a growing £2.5bn pipeline of over 8,000 rent-only homes across the UK, we are driving complete vertical integration. To fast track tech-enablement, we have curated relationships with several best-in-class tech brands to ensure that connectivity and continued innovation enables us to respond quickly to residents ever-changing needs, and in the short term, a new way of living in a Covid-19 world.
One such example is our partnership with Utopi. Their world-leading multi-sensor allows us to track and control air quality in our buildings in real-time, including temperature, humidity, light, noise, and CO2 – all key wellness factors in the long term, but it has also allowed us to adapt the IoT software to keep Covid out of our neighbourhoods with instant thermal screening, people counting cameras (aggregating anonymised data) and automated cleaning regimes.
We see investment in technology as a necessity for a new breed of renter, and all residential landlords should investigate this where possible.
Ultimately, we are focused on creating a positive impact in the sector long term, and technology is already improving building management, delivering cost savings for our residents, lowering energy consumption, moving us towards net-zero carbon, and increasing the sustainability of our neighbourhoods and their long-term asset value.
Q: What does the BTR development of 2030 look like for you?
A: Convenience is king with BTR and that will only evolve. Our neighbourhoods are a one stop shop, not just for best in class accommodation, but the concept of lifestyle as a service. We are focussing on this in a lot of detail. From physical and mental health right down to methods of travel, be it car clubs, e-scooters or drones. We have some exciting partnerships to announce in 2021 that span the spectrum. Covid has shown that productivity can be achieved wherever you are with high quality connectivity, in some cases improved.
On that basis the environment which you choose to spend most of the time needs to flex around your wants and needs and make you feel safe secure and happy whilst you dwell there.
By 2030 you’ll be looking at vertically integrated, operationally sustainable and entirely Smart neighbourhoods, and Moda will be the brand synonymous with BTR with a suite of products to suit your budget across your entire property lifecycle in all major and commuter cities across the UK.
Q: Sustainability has, for so long, been associated with additional development costs – how do you sell trialling sustainable methodologies to your investors and financers as a necessity?
A: The key is to take a long-term view. Whilst viability sometimes makes it inevitable, we should all look harder at sustainable construction and operational techniques, initiatives, services and technologies that benefit the assets and the environment longer term. We are fortunate as a family backed business that our vision is already built upon decades of experience.
On that basis and in our opinion, immediate investment in top a quality product will add value and allow the asset to keep its value longer term. We are focused on building and operating assets that have a flexible digital infrastructure that is forward thinking, innovative and can be easily updated for decades to come.
Q: We at UK BTR are of the opinion that modular construction is on the verge of finally having its time in mainstream development – what are your current thoughts on modular and do you ever see it becoming the standard method of construction throughout the UK?
A: It’s a great concept and it’s good to see some people are successfully delivering. The UK housing market needs multiple housing types, using various methods of construction, available at multiple tenures. We all need to work harder to improve the offer for the whole of the UK. it will be interesting to watch the different methods evolve and see them tested at real scale.
Q: If you had a magic wand that could change anything about our industry to increase the sustainability and development longevity of projects – what would it be?
A: A collective focus on the carbon footprint.
We have the tech; we have the intelligence, but viability and legislation make it hard. It needs looking at collectively and progressively.
There are some amazing initiatives and organisations making some real headway and hopefully that continues and gets further support with decision makers.
Thank you kindly to Oscar & the whole team at Moda for participating and providing us with their time & thoughts.
After four months of sharing opinions from some of the industries leading experts, the first UK Build To Rent Q&A series has drawn to a close. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading these insights as much as we have enjoyed sharing them.
Thank you once again to all of our respondents and readers for taking part in our inaugural Q&A series. The response has been very positive & supportive and we look forward to announcing our next series in 2021.
UK Build to Rent Team
Subscribe
Every Friday we send an email with that weeks published posts. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing.