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In conversation with Katherine Rose, co-founder of VervLife, and Chair of the ARL Co-living Committee, whose journey to BTR came via Somerset House, the Royal Ballet School and falling in love in Devon.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to BTR

When I graduated from university I worked at Somerset House in the events team.
This involved working really closely with the facilities team, which I really enjoyed, and when I moved on to a job at The Royal Ballet School, I looked after their Floral Street site.

The RBS then did a redevelopment at White Lodge in Richmond Park which I worked on, and Ìýonce that was done I felt I’d outgrown the work I was doing at the School.

I did a very short stint at the Salters’ Company, one of the Livery Companies in the City, who were due to do a major development of their premises. However, that project didn’t happen, so I was looking for a more fulfilling role and moved to become a building manager for Knight Frank.

This is probably 20 years ago, but I progressed at Knight Frank and moved into the surveying side working on major central London commercial properties like The Gherkin and Top Shop. I really, really enjoyed my role and while I was there, I did my post-grad diploma in real estate at London South Bank University.

I completed a lot of technical projects like fire alarm replacements or lift replacements and loved it. However, romance led to relocation and I fell in love with somebody from back home in Devon who was never going to move to London, so I ended up relocating.

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So what happened next?

I relocated to the South-West, where I joined a large property company called LSL Group, which a lot of people haven’t heard of because their market presence is predominantly via Ìýtheir portfolio of sub-brands. For example they owned Marsh & Parsons, a big estate agency branch in London, and Your Move. LSL’s network was I think around 700 branches at its peak, so it was a sizeable business.

They also had a big financial services division and when I joined I was responsible for leading Ìýtheir residential team, working with Barclays Wealth and other clients to manage high net-worth individual residential properties. I did that for a few years until about 10 years ago when LSL could see that Build to Rent was starting to emerge.

Being a big PLC, they wanted to move into the sector because they could see it was a great opportunity which complemented their businesses.

Because of my experience at Knight Frank, my understanding of how commercial buildings operated with service-charge budgets and the work I’d been doing for them on the residential side, I was seconded to the Build-to-Rent team before it was even formed.

We launched and successfully grew that team there under a brand called PRSim.

Through various staff changes and promotions I became Client Services Director and ended up leading on mobilisations, business development and client relationships.

We mobilised many multi-family BTR schemes across the country but we were also a relatively early entrant into the Single-Family Homes sector.

So, when did VervLife come into being?

We launched just over three years ago; we operate in UK-wide single-family housing and BTR, and we’re also the largest co-living operator in the UK. We are backed by Homes for Students, the largest student operator in the UK with around 40,000 beds under management nationwide.

At VervLife, I’m managing director and co-founder, so I’ve been involved in scaling up the business, to the point we now employ over 100 people and manage over three-and-a-half thousand units across the UK.

In a nutshell, we get involved with clients at early stages when projects are in the design consultancy phase and progress through viability and feasibility to helping them on the plan for management, making sure they’re designed efficiently. Ultimately, of course, we want the operational management when the building is up,

What’s top of your in-tray at the moment?

Top of my agenda is working on the pitches and tenders that we’re involved in, so trying to grow and develop the business.

My inbox is also full Ìýwith emails from clients on pre-applications and planning on some sites, which is a which is a challenge.

I think getting planning, and with ever-increasing build costs, viability is difficult, so they’re probably the things we’re working hardest on currently. Planning is always a stumbling block. I’m certainly glad I’m not a planner!

Do you think planning changes are afoot courtesy of the new government?

I’m not yet sure there is a plan and how this is going to actually facilitate the delivery of homes faster, quicker, better. I’m watching the space quite closely and seeing industry updates come through from the BPF is always interesting.

Through the ARL and BPF as an industry we have a real opportunity for engaging with government and hopefully influencing policy.

But I think the biggest challenge at the moment is cost. Build cost increases are slowing, but it’s still a challenge to get schemes to become financially viable.

Where do you think BTR is going over the next five years?

I know from Brendan Geraghty, Chief Executive at ARL, and also the BPF that we’re looking to how we can work more closely together.

There’s no point in six different people trying to get meetings with the housing minister to try and say vaguely the same sort of thing: It’s so much better to be working together with one voice, in unison. Working more closely together is a net gain for the industry.

If you look at the stats on BTR and the journey we’ve been on over the last 10 years, we have seen huge growth. I do only see that further growing, not just in multi-family, but also single-family housing and hopefully co-living, which has a huge headroom for growth.

We all know that getting on the housing ladder is incredibly difficult and will remain so, however it’s important to note that renting is an active preference for many people now.

All-inclusive rents are hugely, hugely popular. I think Rightmove say that it’s the second most popular search engine search term on their website now.

We’re really lucky to be working across different asset types within the sector. Having a range of product has got to be important for the market, especially with affordability issues.

Now that some of the early BTR schemes are aging, it is a challenge to keep standards high from a property-management point of view?

Yes, it is a challenge. It’s a challenge to keep standards high and to keep the rents affordable. If you look at the commercial world in London, the Gherkin now looks does look tired and I think we are certainly going to see that on the residential side with BTR with some of the first generation assets.

The challenge you can also have as an operator is your investors’ strategy and whether they’ve got a long-term hold on the product or whether they’re wanting to sell it at stabilisation because that changes their view in terms of funding.

We work closely with our investor clients to ensure that our buildings are managed to the highest possible standards. Clearly, health and safety are non-negotiable but people’s needs have also changed which means we have to constantly review our approach to resident experience.

Schemes that are coming out of the ground now were probably planned pre-Covid. Co-working space is the most popular space in our buildings – many BTR schemes don’t offer that. It wasn’t important pre-Covid. People’s needs change and that’s a challenge because what we’re planning for today might not be what the market wants in three years’ time. Nobody has a crystal ball.

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What keeps you awake at night?

I travel a lot so staying in different hotel rooms and not being at home in my own bed can often keep me awake at night!

But also planning for the next day can keep me up. It’s making sure I haven’t forgotten to send an email or contact a client.

Also, having grown the business I want to keep everybody happy, the team, the clients. I want to make sure we’re all doing a good job, not dropping balls.

What’s your call to action?

I’m looking forward to seeing forward progress under the new Board at the ARL. I think the work that’s been done over the past years has been a huge success and it’s exciting to move onto the next stage.

ÌýI think the sector needs to be more joined up as a whole – we need to work together and share. There’s a lot of valuable information, knowledge and data within our businesses but we need to join up and share our insights if we want to accelerate growth of the sector.

Sector diversification for the ARL is important under the new brand, and I think if we can do that across all the rental sectors that can only serve to grow our membership and amplify our collective voice.