What is build-to-rent?

THE SHORT VERSION

In an ordinary rental, a private landlord owns one home, or a few, and lets it through an agent. In build-to-rent, a single institution — a pension fund, an insurer, a specialist investor — owns the whole building or estate and employs an operator to let and run it. The homes are designed for renting from the start, the landlord never intends to sell them, and the people who fix the boiler work for the building.

WHAT THAT MEANS FOR A RENTER

• One landlord for the whole building, with a team on site or on call, rather than a chain of agent, landlord and contractor.
• Longer, more flexible tenancies are common, because the owner wants stable occupancy, not a sale.
• Shared spaces — a gym, a lounge, a roof terrace, co-working — appear in many apartment schemes, priced into the rent.
• No agency fees to apply, and viewings and applications go through the operator directly.
• Rents are usually above the local average for existing stock, because the buildings are new and amenitised; the trade is service and certainty for price.

TWO PRODUCTS, ONE SECTOR

Multifamily is the apartment building: one block, one owner, one management operation, typically in a city centre. Single-family is the housing estate: a parcel of houses bought from a housebuilder as a block and let as one portfolio, usually suburban, often with the rest of the estate sold to individual buyers around it. Co-living is a multifamily variant with smaller private rooms and more shared space. The directory lists all three: multifamily, single family and co-living within multifamily.

WHO IS INVOLVED

• Asset owner — the institution that holds the building as an investment. Often more than one, and buildings trade between owners.
• Operator — the company that lets and manages it day to day, sometimes the owner's own platform, more often a specialist working under its own brand.
• Developer — who built it. In single-family, usually a housebuilder that sold the parcel to the owner.

The directory records all three separately for every scheme, with ownership kept as history when an asset changes hands.

WHAT THE DIRECTORY COUNTS AS BUILD-TO-RENT

The test is single ownership. An apartment building is listed only when the whole building is in one ownership and professionally managed; a fund holding some flats inside a block with many other owners is not build-to-rent, however well it is let. A parcel of houses is listed when it was acquired as a block and is managed as one operation, whatever the neighbours do. Student accommodation, serviced apartments and homes sold off-plan to individual investors are outside scope. The full method is on the methodology page.

WHERE TO GO NEXT

• Build to rent by city — every city with a scheme, with the larger ones written up.
• The largest operators — who manages the most homes.
• The pipeline — what is under construction and in planning.
• The headline statistics — the numbers, dated, to quote.