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Debra Yudolph

Propertyshe podcast: Debra Yudolph

Founder and CEO of SAY

Posted on 22 February 2024

Susan Freeman

Hi, I’m Susan Freeman.  Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am delighted to welcome Debra Yudolph.  Debra is the Founder and CEO of SAY, an award-winning consultancy business working with investors and developers to provide strategic operational advice for mixed-use and living assets.  Debra has over 25 years’ experience in residential property and recognised as one of the major contributors to the industry.  Before starting SAY, Debra was Director of Asset and Property Management at Grainger plc.  Debra is an expert in residential property and asset management with a particular focus on Build to Rent, placemaking, regeneration and industry innovation.  Debra has non-exec roles on the boards of Grove End Housing Limited, M&G Shared Ownership Fund, is an advisor to DeverellSmith Recruitment and served on the Board of Notting Hill Housing for nine years.  So now we are going to hear from residential expert, Debra Yudolph on what’s going on in the housing sector.  Debra, good afternoon, welcome to the virtual studio.  I know we’ve talked a little bit in the past and I think it would be interesting for the listeners to know how you ended up in real estate because it wasn’t a direction you were originally going in when you left school so, should we start there?

Debra Yudolph

Yes, let’s start there because it’s I think relatively unusual, I suppose so, definitely no, no family in real estate and I left school at sixteen, which I think is quite unusual in itself.  I, I went to Harrods and did a management training course and I really wanted to be a fashion buyer and I did Business Studies at the same time, they had a, it was great actually, a great course, you moved around the department store and worked in different departments and you, you went to college at the same time.  And that’s really what I wanted to do and then I, so I didn’t go to university but I went to America to work and I was, well I like to say I worked for a fashion designer but I was also a part-time nanny at the same time but so they were a great family that I am still in touch with and so I was sort of still pursuing my passion, did a lot of travelling, went hitchhiking which was very stupid, and then came back and, and it was very, it was quite difficult to find a job, particularly in what I wanted to do.  So, I sort of fell into property and I got a job being a trainee property manager and I was good at it and I, for some reason, and probably because I like people and I’m interested in property and design and, and it gave me access to lots of different things and I think for anyone that’s worked in residential property management, I was talking at something and said if you want to be good at something maybe choose something where most people aren’t very good, which is rather unfair on residential property management but I found it quite easy to be different I suppose and to do a good job and I always thought I’d step out of it because all of my friends worked in fashion and I was at that age where what you did was very important to your self-esteem and particularly being young and single, it’s not very glamorous saying that you’re a property manager, so that didn’t go down that well.  But I tried to sort of get out of it a few times and I suppose as I progressed in my career, I got more and more interesting jobs and that’s really how I stayed in, I had a, a stint in Australia as well, lived in Australia for a little while, so I’ve travelled a lot but sort of came back to it, I suppose. 

Susan Freeman

And I’ve got a note here, before we go on further with your real estate career, I’ve got a note about a dead flower business. 

Debra Yudolph

Yes.  So, I think the positive thing about living in America was that I, and I was very young, is that I came back believing that you could sort of do whatever you wanted to do and I think that that American spirit is very different from the British spirit and particularly if you leave school early and not necessarily like your peers.  What America did was it gave me this sort of self-belief I suppose, I was able to grow up in my own time but it also, people would, you’d have an idea and people would say “that’s a great idea” even it was a terrible idea and I think it instils a sense of self-belief, particularly in younger people, and so when I came back I did mix with quite a random group of people and we decided that we should try and start a business that we knew wasn’t really going to progress but we wanted to sort of see how much publicity we could get and so we started a business selling dead flowers and it was probably around Valentine’s Day or nearby and we produced some marketing and we sent out a press release to various people and we got huge traction and ended up on television talking about it and it was a horrible idea really because it was sort of sending dead flowers to people that you didn’t like very much, which is horrible, but we were young and, and you know, that was what you did when you were young, but I think it also made me realise that if you’ve got an idea and you promote it well, then people are interested and again, I think that was a good lesson learned and you know it opened and shut very quickly, although actually if anyone had wanted the dead flowers, we did get some interest but obviously, dead flowers are things that people give away, so it’s actually quite a good idea really.  So, yeah, that was, that was the beginning of I suppose it took a long time to become an entrepreneur but my dad was an entrepreneur and I think I always had that spirit in me really.  So, yeah. 

Susan Freeman

No, I suppose dead flowers aren’t that far away from dried flowers and people like dried flowers so. 

Debra Yudolph

Yeah, we should, could have just tweaked it a bit and maybe we would have had a success but yeah, it was interesting and I had done Business Studies and so I suppose I was always genuinely quite interested in what makes businesses work as well, so, yeah. 

Susan Freeman

So, you were progressing in your property management career and thinking well perhaps this is something that you’ll, you’ll stay with.  Then what happened?  Was it at that stage you went to Grainger?

Debra Yudolph

Yes, so I was at W Ellis, which was great and I did well there and I was put in charge of property management, I mean when I think back it was a very different world.  When I joined, we weren’t allowed to wear trousers, which was the first thing that I corrected once I was made an associate and, you know it was a, it was a, you know I’m going back quite a long time.  But then I was asked if I would go for an interview at Grainger and I knew of Grainger because they were one of our clients and but they were a client that really we had no contact with and I think in the world of property management if you don’t shout as the client, you probably get the worst service, if we’re honest and so, they were a client we had but they weren’t a very prevalent client, although we managed quite a lot of their property.  Anyway, I, I was quite disinterested really, I don’t think I understood the benefits of being the principal rather than their manager but I went over and they literally were over the road and I went for an interview, rather half-heartedly, and it was one of those interviews when you then come out and you’re desperate for the job and it was a complete turnaround in my mind and really that was because Rupert, who was the CEO at the time, was very compelling and I think that really early on he understood that in order to attract investment and to grow the business, the operational side of the business had to be really good and he, that was the challenge that he gave me really. 

Susan Freeman

Rupert Dickinson was, I mean he was a bit of a visionary, I mean I, I never met him but I heard a lot about him, I think he was quite a character, wasn’t he?

Debra Yudolph

I think, yeah, a character is one way of putting it, I mean I think I said to you when we spoke, it’s a, it’s a complicated way of thinking about him because I, you know, he was my mentor and he, you know he really allowed me to develop a career and to, to influence things that I didn’t, wasn’t necessarily perceived to be an expert in.  He saw my abilities, which is, was fantastic.  I mean he wasn’t an anarchist, I would say, I think I said to you in today’s world, he would be rather unacceptable and inappropriate but I do believe he probably would have changed with the time and yeah, I mean he was really inspiring and you know Grainger is a very different place today and it needed to be a different place but at that time, and you know I’m going back twenty years when I joined, it was very exciting, it was, there were no boundaries and we were allowed to, we were really encouraged to do what we wanted to do and I was given a huge amount of opportunity and I will always be grateful to him for that.

Susan Freeman

And it was the largest residential landlord at the time?

Debra Yudolph

Yep, it was the largest residential, we were a plc, so it was the largest residential investor at the time and we grew, we bought a couple that we did I think three corporate acquisitions when I was there, one of a business that was probably two or three times our size, so it was through a period of really significant change.  I think Rupert and other people at Grainger really understood that there was an opportunity in residential investment, I mean what we, the core of the business was, was investing in protected tenancies, we had a huge portfolio that we managed ourselves and Build to Rent just wasn’t a thing but we did spend a lot of time talking about institutional investment into residential and while I was there, we teamed up with Schroders, who launched I think probably the first what would now be Build to Rent investment fund with Bill Hughes and I think that we understood the opportunity but the risks associated with being a residential landlord were really perceived to be really high and there was a huge amount of nervousness about being linked with owning residential property, all of that actually has proved to be not the issue.  So we did a lot of talking about it and I did a lot of talking about it and it was quite difficult because it didn’t gain a lot of momentum, we would have some sort of false starts but you know Schroders were ahead of the time, I suppose, at the time and obviously, if we look back, we can see that things had moved on hugely but we understood what we were trying to do but it was difficult to get there. 

Susan Freeman

And when was that, when did Schroders set up that fund?

Debra Yudolph

So, I would say that was probably 2002/3.

Susan Freeman

That is early, isn’t it.

Debra Yudolph

Yeah. 

Susan Freeman

Yes, because we all sort of think that it really started in about 2012.

Debra Yudolph

And it did, I mean really Build to Rent as a thing is probably ten to twelve years old, I suppose but, but there were, there were efforts to do it before then, IPD set up a benchmark, there was, there was quite a lot that happened before that time and it, you know, all the stars have to be aligned don’t they in respect of investment opportunity and yeah, things have to, in a rising market it was difficult to get things off the ground because people were more interested in selling individual homes than creating long-term investments. 

Susan Freeman

And when you talk about the risks and nervousness, is that to do with reputational risk, not wanting to be seen to sort of evict sort of elderly people from their homes and that sort of thing?

Debra Yudolph

Yeah, I mean, when we worked with Schroders, I remember that, and again you know it’s not a criticism of Schroders at the time but, but they wanted to be very much anonymous in the process and they definitely didn’t want their names on the tenancy agreements and all of that, there was the, you know, the conversations that used to happen about the chairman being called up in the middle of the night about a leaking tap and there was a huge amount of concern about that, which, which never really, it didn’t play out into the reality of what happened but, but there were those concerns and there was a lot of discussion around how to let the investors be anonymous and obviously Grainger was a, a good front for that because we were, we were visible and we were happy to be visible and we had a role of asset and property manager at the time, which again was quite sort of ahead of itself in a way.  But yes, there were a number of things that people felt were holding back the sector from growing and a big one that used to be discussed a lot was reputational risk.

Susan Freeman

And I remember you say, sort of ten years on when we started talking about Build to Rent and the UK funds were quite reticent to go back into residential investment because I think they had been in the past and weren’t that comfortable with it.  So, your role at Grainger, did you continue doing the sort of property management role?

Debra Yudolph

Yes, so I was Head of Asset and Property Management for the portfolio and we did a lot of restructuring because as I say we did some corporate acquisitions and I was on the executive team and you know part of it was learning to be a good manager, a good leader of people I suppose hopefully, and also to be part of you know a plc and an executive team so, there was a lot of learning there and a lot of growth and it was a, you know, as is still the case in some places, a very male dominated organisation but we did have a really big property management team and we, we worked hard to really make that professional organisation, which you know we did well, I think.  And, yeah, I was, you know very happy there.  Rupert, unfortunately became very ill and had to sort of step away from the business and I think that to be fair to Grainger, it was probably appropriate, I don’t know what would have, who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been ill but Grainger was definitely mature, you know it was growing up and it was a very different organisation from the one I joined ten years earlier and we were in the depths of the recession, 2008/9, my role had actually changed, I’d become Head of Communication and CSR, which was, and also a sort of bringing on new parts of, of operations and services into the business, which again was really, you know, was great for me because one of the things I’m really interested in was the CSR element of the business and also how to communicate well, so that was great and I learned a lot but then the recession came and we were making redundancies and I did put my hand up and say I think that it’s probably, I’m probably surplus to requirements in a way but also I think I’d sort of done my job and was ready to, for something else. 

Susan Freeman

So that’s when you left Grainger.

Debra Yudolph

That’s when I left, with no plan and it was tough, there were no, there were no real jobs so I thought I’d become a consultant as a temporary, temporary activity and I have to say, from the day I left I was busy, which was really good and I think that it was clear that you know my experience was, had been really valuable and so I started working on my own and there were some, you know, out of, in a recession, particularly a recession like that which was really tough, opportunities for investment were there and there was a, you know, much more interest and appetite for, for rental housing, so that played to my strengths I suppose.  And out of that we set up SAY so, as I say, without a, a clear plan I never imagined, I, I did always think it was a temporary activity and that I’d go and find a proper job but it was, you know, it was great because I had really positive feedback and opportunity and also I was relatively well connected and so other things happened that I went on the board of Notting Hill and you know there were other activities that sort of helped.  I have to say that I think being made redundant, even if you want to be made redundant, is a really interesting process to go through and again, I think it’s one of the things that’s made me a better person in a way because I think that even though I wanted it, it’s very difficult and you know when you’re part of a big corporation, you’re included in lots of activities and you know I didn’t really realise I think how, how easy it was to meet people and do things and then suddenly you’re on your own and I’m sure we’ll get onto Andrew but I also have a husband who works in property, who was at Grainger at the time, so he stayed and I think I described it a bit like living with your ex-boyfriend’s brother or something, where I sort of, I’d left the family and but I still had to hear about it all the time and it, and it was quite difficult, particularly when things started to get better because it’s hard not to, you know I was there for ten years so it was a really big part of my life and so, I didn’t want to necessarily escape but I think maybe you know it was quite difficult living in such close confines to the, to the growth and changes that, that formed Grainger of today.  But also you’re not part of a thing anymore and you’re, for anyone that’s done it, and at the time you know people didn’t work from home and you’re sort of sitting at home wondering what to do with yourself on some days and so, but that was quite tough actually as a process to go through but I think it’s important to understand how that can feel for people, particularly maybe at the moment when people are, there are some redundancies going on, it is, you know I think I was really, it’s really important that people understand the impact of that and that they support people as best they can and I’m always the first one that people phone when they’re looking for a new job.  I always know, sometimes, in a nice way, that I hear from people and I think oh maybe they’re thinking about moving on and I think it is because I’m, I’m always very conscious that you know, people were great to me when I left Grainger and it’s important that you know, you’re there to support people when they’re going through times of change or they’re looking for a new opportunity or what to do next. 

Susan Freeman

A very good point, you’re probably going to get a lot of calls now.  But you’ve mentioned Andrew and it isn’t widely known outside residential circles that you and your husband are part of a real estate power couple, I’ve seen you referred to as ‘Mr and Mrs Build to Rent’. 

Debra Yudolph

Yes, coined by Andrew Deverell-Smith.  I don’t know, I think power couple is taking it many steps too far.  But yeah, I mean lots of, lots of people I suppose work alongside or you know have met their other halves at work and but the Build to Rent bit of the industry is rather small and quite incestuous and it’s, it’s, yeah, I mean it’s nice, you know, it’s good that we have that in common, you have to be careful not to talk about work all the time.  He was at Grainger for a really long time, he’s not there any more, so, yeah, we have a lot of crossover and we’ve made  a lot of friends in the industry which is great.  Our poor daughter, I mean she could probably go on Mastermind and name the Top 10 Build to Rent operators in the UK, which is a side effect of not realising that you’re talking about work, so we have her to tell us to shut up every so often so, yeah. 

Susan Freeman

Well I have to say, I didn’t realise that you were a couple until a couple of years ago when I was on the plane back from MIPIM and you were sitting next to each other and I’m thinking oh, but yeah, so I worked it out after that. 

Debra Yudolph

Thankfully, you worked it out.  We have laughed about that sometimes where we’re at MIPIM and then we might, we generally don’t see each other the whole time we’re there because we’re doing different things but we might meet up at the end of the evening and then walk back to wherever, if we’re staying, often we don’t stay in the same place.  I always think that people must think that he’s got lucky but obviously, he thinks that people think that I’ve got lucky, so, yeah, but we are a couple. 

Susan Freeman

So, you set up your business and I’ve never asked you actually why, why you called it SAY?

Debra Yudolph

Okay.  So, it’s called SAY because until very recently I had a business partner called Charles Seifert who we’ve just restructured the business and he’s not a partner in the business but we were partners for twelve years and having spent a lot of time trying to work out what to call it and particularly I think being conscious that both of our names were quite well known, particularly, well his because his grandfather was the very famous architect.  I didn’t want my surname to be in the name but Seifert and Yudolph made up SAY and that’s why we’re called SAY, so that’s where it came from but most people never worked it out but I don’t know, it seems to work, so, there we go. 

Susan Freeman

No, it seems so obvious now that you’ve explained it.  So, tell us what you do at SAY and you know how, because I know, you know there is the Build to Rent which we, we’ve talked about but I know it encompasses far more than that. 

Debra Yudolph

Yeah, so we’re strategic operational advisors and we do some residential operational asset management as well and we work across all tenures, although we’re quite well known for Build to Rent but it’s certainly not in any way the majority of our business.  We work with developers and investors and we look at the design from an operational perspective and also the operational costs and then we also help owners of residential led places on, that exist on operations and improving operations and we run a lot of management tenders and we use our, our operational expertise.  So it’s quite niche and you know we work a lot in later living, Build to Rent, co-living but also more and more on what I would call new settlements and I think that me and lots of people in the team are really passionate about helping people create places that are equitable for everybody I suppose and that are sustainable in all senses, both financially and environmentally and from a community perspective and, you know, we’ve been going for twelve years and in that twelve years there’s been, I think what we’ve done is become more important and more widely recognised and, you know some of it is, is pretty dull, like how do you clean the windows, but all of these things are really important and it is about creating places that are attractive to people that live and work there and visit and that live up to the vision that someone has had and a lot of effort and time goes into the design and the marketing and the naming and I don’t think enough effort and thought goes into how it’s going to feel to live there and, and you know making it a joyous experience, I suppose. 

Susan Freeman

Yes, and we’ll, we’ll come back to the co-living and, and later living and if we can just focus on Build to Rent first of all, I mean what do you think are the main challenges for UK Build to Rent at the moment?  Are we building places that people want to live in and feel happy living in or how do you see it?

Debra Yudolph

So, I think we are building places that people want to live in and are happy in and I think that there is a sense of community in lots of them and I think that we are delivering a much higher rental experience than, than you get, you know not everywhere because I think we have to be careful not to disregard private landlords who do a really good job and also, developers like Ballymore and Berkeley, who have created great places to live with a sense of community, with lots of renters in even though they’re not Build to Rent, so I think that we do have to be careful not trying to claim that we invented something that did already exist actually, which was highly amenitised, high end places.  I think the challenges for Build to Rent are affordability, also as schemes get older, continuing to invest in them, so lifecycle costs and how do you maintain the quality, it’s very expensive.  And also trying to deliver what provides a good return but also what’s needed to a certain extent and there’s a balance isn’t there between, we’re not trying to solve the housing crisis or, I hate that word, ‘housing crisis’ because I think it’s just a terrible catch-all but we’re not trying solve that by delivering Build to Rent, it’s part of the housing solution but it is very much targeted at a certain, you know, it is in the top 25% quartile of rents and affordability and so, we have to be conscious of that, I think when were delivering what we’re delivering. 

Susan Freeman

So, should there be more Build to Rent developments at the sort of more affordable level or do the costs of actually providing it and building it just make it difficult to do that, especially in and around London?

Debra Yudolph

So I think viability is an issue but actually, as operational costs have gone up, particularly around people and energy costs, some of the biggest costs of running Build to Rent are those two things, as well as insurance at the moment, and so actually a lower level of amenity and less people on the ground can deliver good returns so, I think that there can be, and there are people delivering mid-market housing into the, into rental which is, is as far as I am concerned Build to Rent, so I think that there has to be a variety and I do think that there has been a bit of an amenity arms race into what’s being delivered and there does seem to be a pulling back of that and I think that single family rental which is housing, it’s a terrible name but, housing for families, generally housing, not necessarily for families but its houses as opposed to apartments, there’ll be something in between that is less amenitised, that’s more mid-market because if you’re looking at your, your income and your return, some of the costs of delivering highly amenitised places without huge scale doesn’t necessarily deliver the best returns but it is an attractive rental proposition. 

Susan Freeman

And as part of your role you’re presumably advising developers on how to set up the service charge and how to ensure full recovery, I mean do developers get it wrong on service charge and what are the pitfalls?

Debra Yudolph

Yes, so, so we do a lot of work on mixed use places and service charges and without boring everybody, there’s been some big shifts and a lot of focus on this because of the Government and wrapped up in fire safety and also the abolition of ground rents, it’s very complicated to deliver a place and particularly a larger place and work out who is going to be the, the long-term custodian of that place and making sure that it, you get it right and I think that lawyers and developers are still, they have a misunderstanding of this and they haven’t really understood the implications of the changes that have come forward so, we do a lot of work on how to set up a place but also trying to be innovative and you can create great community interest, companies and structures where a lot of the, the infrastructure and the community assets can be paid for in a different way and we’ve all read about the poor door but you know one of the things is about it being equitable and places need to be mixed and affordable for everyone and so, those challenges of delivering places where there’s a lot of open, green space and public realm, it’s important to think about how that’s going to be paid for and it’s not top of developers’ lists often but it is, it is what makes a place successful in the long-term so, and we’ve seen you know people like the landed estates do that so well and we’re creating huge places all over the country that need to be thought about from, as if they were you know a new settlement, and to make them interesting and exciting, I mean that makes it sound rather dull but we do have an opportunity to be innovative and create interesting things in places because it doesn’t have to all be in really urban locations. 

Susan Freeman

Yeah, and I imagine if you, if you get a service charge structure wrong it can, it can be sort of pretty expensive in the, in the long run.  And do you think the Government is still too focussed on home ownership rather than rental because you know so much that one hears from the Government is still about “people need to get onto the housing ladder” with the sort of assumption that you know everybody will want to own and that rental is still regarded as, you know, not being where one should aspire to. 

Debra Yudolph

I think that there is too much of a focus on home ownership, particularly because it’s so out of reach for such a huge part of the population and so it is really important that people have a choice and lots of people don’t want to own their own home equally, many, many young people do really want to own their own home but can’t and I think that whether they choose not to or whether they can’t, it’s important that they have options in the rental market that are, are really good and that they can have a home that they enjoy living in and you know, it’s so important isn’t it.  So I think that the Government does need to change its rhetoric, I think unfortunately when they talk about rental, it’s generally quite negative about landlords and I think it has to be a balanced argument but I do understand where it comes from and I do understand why landlords get a bad rap I suppose but I think one of my frustrations is that perhaps the Build to Rent sector hasn’t done very well at explaining to the general public, I mean it’s such a tiny part of the market, so we have to be realistic about the impact that it can have but it, it doesn’t necessarily keep promoting the USPs and the benefits and that means that the perception of all landlords being bad and all renting being bad, is just reinforced all the time because regularly, as I’m sure you’ve seen on the news, often you know there’s a story about another bad landlord and actually often about another bad housing association and so, you know, that’s, that’s the public’s perception and we need to try to do something to counterbalance that.  And we have a mystery shopping business called hereSAY, so we, we mystery shop the lead to lease experience in Build to Rents, we have a lot of insight into what the customer is told when they are looking to rent in a Build to Rent scheme.  I think we’ve done a thousand mystery shops or more than that so far.  And the messaging around the benefits of Build to Rent are not consistent and well explained is one of the things that we’ve found and I think that it is important that, that the Government, I mean I know that they get a balanced view when they bother to talk to people from the industry and obviously through things like the BPF but I think that it’s the consumer that votes and it’s them that we need to persuade that renting is not a bad experience, it’s generally a good experience and, and we need to do better at that, I think. 

Susan Freeman

And it doesn’t make for a good news story does it if there’s a good landlord a good housing association, that doesn’t hit the um, the headlines.

Debra Yudolph

No, and that’s always been the case, I mean, you know, going back to Grainger, you know as soon as something happened or someone believed something happened that wasn’t good, we were in the news, it was very difficult to counterbalance that with positive stories, so it is a challenge. 

Susan Freeman

And now it’s even worse because you’re on social media before you even get to the news story so it’s sort of instantaneous isn’t it. 

Debra Yudolph

Yeah.

Susan Freeman

You mentioned the, the mystery shopper service and I’d just like to hear a little bit about how that works.  So, you, you just send somebody along, do they stay in the development or they just go and talk to people?

Debra Yudolph

No, they don’t stay, so we start at the enquiry point in, and we don’t just do Build to Rent, we started to do student as well, so it starts and the enquiry point and it goes through to, the mystery shopper does the viewing and then the post-viewing, we measure that as well, the experience, so did you get follow-up and do you get what you asked for at the end of your viewing and we have a lot of data, I think we have 80 questions that are answered.  We work with a mystery shopping company, so all of the mystery shoppers are in the right demographic, they can all afford to live where they’re shopping and so, hopefully, it’s a very balanced view and it’s used by our clients for training and development and rewards but also to look at their standards, their customer service standards and whether they need to, to change them or not or tweak them and to look at what’s working, what’s not working, we get a lot of feedback on the schemes as well, so we also measure the perception of the schemes, things that you can improve like cleanliness and presentation and things you can’t change like location.  And it’s been really interesting, it’s been about two and a half years in the making, we produce a benchmark so we, we measure everyone against each other anonymously so we don’t, we don’t name and shame or but we do announce the, the sort of winners, I suppose and we’re having, getting really good traction, it’s something that I really believe in, I think that data is power and the Build to Rent sector hasn’t, I was talking to a group of people who were doing co-living and I think that if the co-living sector could learn from the Build to Rent sector, it would be to collect data from day one and don’t wait for it to grow because if we’d started earlier, we’d be much more knowledgeable, so that’s a frustration but it, you know it is, you know what we do is quite technical as a business but it is about customer experience, delivering great customer experience and, and I love this bit of the business because it’s, it’s so insightful and, and you get the really granular feedback and you can see what people actually say about a place, which is fascinating. 

Susan Freeman

Yes, it’s very transparent actually, it must be quite sort of awkward for people of they’re, they’re not coming where they, where they want to come.  And what’s it showing in terms of the sort of customer experience and customer service, I mean are the operators actually getting it right generally?

Debra Yudolph

I think generally they’re getting it right, we’ve, we’ve done three benchmarks, this is the third one that’s coming out and you know, each one has been in a different period.  The first one we started and then Covid happened, so that was challenging, it took us quite a long time to get through that, and obviously at that point landlords were pretty desperate for applicants and that wasn’t necessarily being reflected in the service and it was a really challenging time.  The second benchmark was in a period where you could literally open a front door and someone would take the property and so we’re seeing a sort of I think a bit of a cooling down of the market now, a normalisation, I would say, you know we had pent up demand post Covid and so we’ve seen really unprecedented demand for rental housing and rental, and that’s created rental growth.  I think it’s, it’s normalising a bit and so probably this benchmark has, has measured a more normal market.  Um yeah, most of the time people get it right, it’s, it’s, there’s definitely room for improvement, I think the schemes, I mean the scores we get for the places are fantastic, you know really high, so we’ve created great product.  And the, you know, often the customer service is great but you know we could do better and I think it’s about consistency, it’s about training, it’s about attracting good people.  We just did some mystery shopping in Australia which was really interesting, which is a very new market, so probably us ten years ago and they did really well and I think that we just have to work hard to keep improving and keep the standards up really and I think that as the market cools down a bit or it gets a little bit harder to, to rent, people are going to have to develop more skills because it is a, you know it is a skill selling and negotiating, it’s not, you know it is something that needs to be trained and, and develop, customer service doesn’t just happen, it has to be, has to be worked hard on. 

Susan Freeman

And I just wondered how we compare to the American market because obviously they’re quite ahead of us on multi-family and of course we’ve got some of the big American operators who are now active in the UK so I just wondered whether our customer services levels were on a par with what you get in America?

Debra Yudolph

So we do work with Greystar and we have other clients who have come over from America working for UK companies and I think that they are more engaged in what we’re talking about, I mean, you know, it took us a little while to get really good traction more broadly across the market and you know and we certainly don’t have everyone as a client but we’ve got quite a good share of the market now.  So I think the Americans just have, and this little bit where I started about America, they just have a more maybe positive attitude to ideas and things and also value, a little bit like the Europeans I think, the people that deliver customer service and they, they understand that it’s a career and, and so I think we have learned, at the beginning of Build to Rent you know we all went off to America and had a look at the schemes but probably the customer service and customer experience and how they operate is something that we maybe should have, you know, we’ve learned from and it is about a culture and the way that we approach it so, yeah, I think that in America just generally, whether you’re looking at hospitality, they probably do have a slightly different attitude to delivering customer service but that’s not to say that we haven’t created our own version and we’re not doing it well.

Susan Freeman

Well that’s, that’s reassuring.  That’s good. 

Debra Yudolph

We’re learning a lot from the hospitality industries aren’t we and you know we all know in the UK you can get terrible service and great service but I think generally, service has probably got better across the board but actually…

Susan Freeman

There must be a lot of demand for people from the hospitality industry because I was a bit sort of horrified sitting in a sort round table a few weeks ago with flex operators and they were saying, “Oh we don’t want boring property people, we want people from the hospitality sector.”  I don’t know if there are enough to go around. 

Debra Yudolph

No.  During Covid, quite a few people came out of being flight attendants into Build to Rent but I, I don’t think they’ve necessarily stayed as the sort of industry has got back on its feet but I thought that was a very interesting source of talent actually but I don’t know, I mean there is a, it is difficult to recruit and, and particularly because of Brexit as well so, it is challenging I think to find people to you know across all of these industries that want to attract hospitality led people.

Susan Freeman

You mentioned family housing and wondered why it was just taking off now, I mean it’s something that you know we’re hearing a lot about now but you know in the earlier days of Build to Rent for instance, it was very much Build to Rent and not much focus on family housing, is that because people want to live in houses with a garden?

Debra Yudolph

I think it’s, it’s market driven as well.  I mean when I, when I started, so I’m going back maybe ten years, one of the first things I did was I worked on an investment fund which was between Berkeley and the HCA and we had quite a lot of housing in that and when I was at Grainger we had a lot of housing, it was Schroders actually, had a lot of housing it was, they did a deal with Crest and we had a lot of houses in that portfolio, so renting out houses is not necessarily a new thing and there has always been demand.  I mean one of the benefits of single family rental is that the operational costs are lower because you don’t have teams on site and the level of amenity and also the sales market is challenged at the moment isn’t it and so, you know part of this is driven by the developers looking for an opportunity or seeing an opportunity to sell in a different way.  I think the challenge for the industry is to sustain those opportunities when, you know if Help to Buy was to come back tomorrow, would the developers still be interested in doing deals with single family housing investors and I think it’s important that we make sure that we can try to sustain the growth and it’s not a flash in the pan and not a bit of a false start because there clearly is demand.  But equally, you know part of the demand is the difficulty for people getting on the housing ladder and so there is a balance as well if another version of Help to Buy was to come forward and the interest rates were lower, then arguably there’s less demand for rental housing but as I say, looking back, it has always been there.  I think one of the challenges for single family rental is how it differentiates itself from the rest of the market, it’s been quite easy for Build to Rent to differentiate itself with amenity, often with amenity but this is all about the customer service and having a good quality, long-term landlord and so it’s a slightly a different thing I think from the consumer’s perspective but I think when we work on new places, there is now an expectation that Build to Rent or single family housing will be part of the make-up of the tenure and I think that in that respect it’s probably here to stay. 

Susan Freeman

And you also mentioned later living earlier on in the conversation and I always wonder, we have an aging population and a demographic timebomb but it seems that later living in this country has been quite slow to happen, I mean is there sort of any particular reason for that?

Debra Yudolph

Part of it is maybe if you build it, they will come and obviously people like McCarthy and Stone have been doing this for a long time.  I think it is about older people not moving out of their houses, staying in under occupied property.  One of the things about talking about the housing crisis is, you know if everyone was to just shuffle around a bit maybe we’d all find that we could right size our own homes and all have somewhere appropriate to live, maybe that’s a bit you know, but there is some of that around in the road I live in, there’s a lot of older people who are still living in relatively large houses in order that they can have their children come and stay at Christmas, so I think we have to provide the right type of later living accommodation.  There are some people that are doing a really good job.  I think later living rental is really interesting and obviously Birch Grove have had investment and are doing well there but the challenges for perhaps slightly younger older people to be prepared to give up their homes and either rent or, you know it’s expensive to move isn’t it so there is, you know, I’m sure that’s, you know, perhaps the Government should focus more on benefits for older people, you know, to give up their larger homes and encourage people out so that there was more moving around.  But it is, I mean it is growing, there’s clearly huge need for it but I think finding, delivering the right product has been, you know, maybe a bit challenging.  I think rental is really interesting.  I think finding a way of enabling people to maybe keep their home and rent it out and rent somewhere else would, you know people are very reticent aren’t they to give up their home and worry about living off their capita, if you’re slightly, a slightly younger older person, you don’t know how long you’re going to live.  I know that for Birch Grove the, you know the age of people going into the accommodation is, is relatively, is the older end of old and maybe that’s the challenge that we have is to try, in America and Australia, there’s a lot more variety of ages that I think are moving into kind of retirement villages and that’s where I think we’d like to get to.  I also think that they need to be part of a mixed community so, again, a little bit like Build to Rent or single family rental, it should be part of the mix, you know it should sit alongside other things. 

Susan Freeman

No, it does make a lot of sense because you hear about obviously older people being lonely, you hear about younger people being lonely and actually sort of mixing people together and you know giving them some social interaction must be a good thing.  I suppose one of the issues with the sort of later, later living, you know the older people, is the care facilities and how, you know because operationally that must be sort of much more complicated than providing sort of other amenities.

Debra Yudolph

I think that what’s interesting is, is that later living is tied up with care and it’s often delivered through a separate organisation but it’s the active aging that we haven’t quite got right here, which has really grown in other areas, where you don’t need care but you are living amongst a group of people where there’s activities and, you know, and I think that that’s the bit, that’s the bit where we maybe need to try to get right.  I’ve been talking to someone in Copenhagen who delivered the first scheme, Build to Rent scheme, and the first people that moved in there were older people, not old people needing care but older people, and they’ve then worked sort of backwards from there and then they’ve got families in there, they’ve got younger people in, they’ve designed the scheme around that and it’s created a really strong community and so, perhaps we just need to understand better what would inspire people to live differently and maybe just generationally it will change as well as perhaps people understand the benefit of living in a community with activities and things like that but, it’s been, yeah, I don’t think, we’re not there yet, that’s for sure. 

Susan Freeman

So you made an interesting point before about solving the housing crisis by getting people to shuffle, to shuffle around a bit and I know you don’t like the expression ‘housing crisis’ but it has been going on for years now and somehow it seems wrong to still talk about it as a crisis because that, you know, crisis is something that needs to be dealt with immediately but any thoughts on how, you know why we haven’t been able to actually…

Debra Yudolph

Solve it.

Susan Freeman

…solve it, yes. 

Debra Yudolph

Well, I suppose, I mean I know everyone harks on about planning but planning has to be part of it, doesn’t it and it is um, I mean I was talking to someone the other day, in London you know we have lived through this extraordinary time of development, which I feel privileged to have been a part of.  If you think about the areas of London and what’s been built, you know by Berkeley, Ballymore, Barratt, I mean it’s extraordinary really what’s been delivered, if you look at Stratford and, I mean it’s just, it’s endless, Greenwich, it’s extraordinary how much housing has been delivered in London and clearly that’s slowed down but it’s also, it’s the market but it’s also, you know, those huge opportunities are perhaps running out.  So we have, you know, and now, you know, other cities have grown hugely, if you look at what’s happened in Manchester, you know some of it from Build to Rent but also from, from new build, so people’s attitude to living in cities has changed and as part of that huge housing delivering, we have delivered a huge amount of affordable housing which we shouldn’t sort of disregard because actually the requirement to deliver affordable housing as part of new build housing has been a success but it’s obviously not enough.  The challenge is that we’re now, you know, housing associations are going through quite a difficult time and planning is really difficult, land is expensive and one of the basics is that where people can afford to live, they don’t want to live because there’s either no employment or you know, and so I don’t know that it’s ever going to be solved as a housing, as you know, there’s probably always going to be a crisis, I don’t know how you define crisis but I don’t, you know, it’s not going to be solved any time soon is it and I think that we need to be a bit more innovative in what we deliver.  And we have this tendency that when we, I don’t know, when we talk about say co-living, it’s almost like this presumption from the Government and local authorities that if we trying to persuade them that co-living is a good thing, that suddenly that’s the only thing that we’re going to be delivering into the housing market and there’s this huge pushback against it because there’s this sort of like fear that all people are suddenly going to have to live in small homes with large amenity spaces and clearly that’s not the case.  So I think that, that sometimes there’s this sort of kneejerk reaction to something which is completely out of proportion to what we’re saying we want to do and so it is about you know educating the Government and planners in what we’re trying to achieve in order to deliver a broader range of housing that is more suitable to more people and more affordable for more people because we do, you know suddenly there’s this like oh well local authorities don’t want to student anymore and we sort of create this sort of huge tension between what people are tying to do, which is a positive thing, being innovative, trying to deliver a broader range of housing, to this sort of kneejerk reaction against it which is well, the GLA or whoever don’t want co-living because it’s, you know why would we put people in, and so I think that we have to really work hard to counterbalance that so that we can continue to be an innovative industry that delivers good quality housing for a very broad range of people.

Susan Freeman

No, I think you are absolutely right.  I remember a developer client who had you know wonderful mixed use in a city with a lot of co-living, just couldn’t get it through, the planners just saw bedsit, I mean they, you know they could only think of the old-fashioned bedsits, they couldn’t really sort of conceive of this you know new concept where yes, smaller rooms but a lot shared space. 

Debra Yudolph

And maybe we need to just humanise it a bit.  We don’t talk about the people very much, we talk about the size of the property and the, you know, but we as a business try to talk about the people and who they are and what they earn and what their needs are and make it feel a bit more real when we produce you know papers for the purposes of planning.  But you know when you break it down to what a local authority needs for its teachers and its, you know, its key workers, they then might understand that actually having some co-living and having some student and having some is a good mix, that’s what places need but I do think that we, you know, there’s a big leap from having an idea about something to this assumption that that’s what everything is going to be from now and clearly that’s not the case. 

Susan Freeman

I think that’s right, I think that’s, that’s a good way of putting it and probably a good place to end.  So, Debra, thank you very much and are you planning to go back to fashion or has fashion lost you forever?

Debra Yudolph

Well, I work on Regent Street and I have to say that I never tire of walking up and down and I, I do this sort of, I observe what the trend, I don’t mean what the fashion trends are but what the trends are in retail and I, I think I’m a frustrated retailer really but I just have to take it as something that I can admire from afar. 

Susan Freeman

That’s great.  Thank you very much. 

Debra Yudolph

Thank you, Susan for inviting me on. 

Susan Freeman

Thank you, Debra for a brilliant overview of what’s going on in the housing sector which continues to be so much in the spotlight.  And the fashion industry’s loss is very definitely the real estate sector’s gain.  So, that’s it for now.  I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation.  Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very shortly. 

The Propertyshe podcast is brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum and can be found at Mishcon.com/PropertyShe along with all our interviews and programme notes.  The podcasts are also available to subscribe to on your Apple podcast app and on Spotify and whatever podcast platform you use.  Do continue to subscribe and let us have your feedback and comments and most importantly, suggestions for future guests.  And of course you can continue to follow me on Twitter @Propertyshe and on LinkedIn for a very regular commentary on all things real estate, Prop Tech and the built environment. 

Debra is the founder and CEO of SAY, an award-winning consultancy business working with investors and developers to provide strategic operational advice for mixed-use and living assets. Debra has over 25 years’ experience in residential property and is recognised as one of the major contributors to the industry. Before starting SAY, Debra was Director of Asset and Property Management at Grainger plc.

She is an expert in residential property and asset management with a particular focus on build to rent, placemaking, regeneration and industry innovation. She has a keen interest in the positive social impact that can be delivered through new development and  has been a long-standing advocate for encouraging diversity within the real estate sector

Debra has non-executive roles on the boards of  Grove End Housing Limited, M&G Shared Ownership Fund, is an advisor to DeverellSmith Recruitment and served on the Board of Notting Hill Housing for nine years.

She is a recognised spokesperson on behalf of the residential sector and is a member of Property Week's Resi Senate.

In this podcast

  • Debra’s early days at Grainger PLC
  • Changing attitudes of UK funds towards investing in residential real estate
  • Dealing with redundancy and starting a new business
  • Solutions to the housing crisis, including progress in co-living and later-living
  • The Build-to-Rent (BTR) sector, amenities competition, and service charge issues
  • The importance of data-driven decision-making and mystery shopping services
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