Realising value in neighbourhoods
CEO’s statement
“We’ve come a long way in seven years and we continue to grow. We have proven what was possible in the rental market and the landscape shifted.”
Realising value in neighbourhoods
Presenting Get Living PLC’s annual report this year has been an invaluable opportunity to reflect on the journey we have travelled to date and the exciting future that lies ahead.
As the first mover in the UK’s nascent build-to-rent sector, Get Living has seen almost seven years of rapid growth. Our vision has always been to change the way people think and feel about renting a home. We set out to deliver a resident experience of a great home in a well-connected location, with a vibrant neighbourhood and community, supported by exemplary service. We disrupted a housing market that wasn’t working for renters. This remains our vision to this day, where our proposition to residents centres around space, time and choice.
Highlights
Plans, places and performance
Operational highlights
- Get Living launched Victory Plaza in May 2019, adding 482 new homes to the heart of East Village.
- In June 2019, Get Living launched New Maker Yards, Greater Manchester, adding 275 homes to the portfolio and establishing Get Living’s first neighbourhood outside London.
- The Group has continued to invest in the improvement of homes and neighbourhoods within the portfolio.
Awards and milestones
- Get Living won Landlord of the Year (Privately Owned) at the annual RESI Awards in May 2019, for the fourth time.
- East Village was named Best Place to Rent in London by HomeViews and won Best Business for Customer Service for Elephant Central at the 2019 Southwark Business Awards.
- Get Living has been shortlisted for Landlord of the Year (private and social) at the RESI Awards 2020.
- The Group successfully completed a £550m re-finance with AIG and LGIM in September 2019, repayable in 2029.
- In November 2019, the Group completed a £187m new facility with PRS Finance PLC repayable in August 2034.
- The Group has an identified pipeline in Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester and London giving access to a pool of potential investments within the private rental sector.
Net rental income (£m)
£0m
+ 0 %*
0
Mar 2019
0
Mar 2020
Portfolio value (£bn)
£0bn
+ 0 %
0
Mar 2019
0
Mar 2020
Homes
0
0 %
0
Mar 2019
0
Mar 2020
* 2019 adjusted to reflect full year
Business Model
Realising value in Neighbourhoods
What we do
We invest in great homes and resident experiences
The overall objective of the Group is to build the best UK PRS platform delivering solid financial performance to shareholders and quality homes to our residents whilst contributing to local communities. Realising a combination of earnings growth and capital appreciation.
How we do it
Wider Outcomes
Social Impact
Get Living neighbourhoods are vibrant places to live anchored in their locality. The Group continually strives to support and enable social value creation.
Environmental impact
Get Living views environmental impact as an integral consideration in the development, design and construction of new homes. The Group seeks to achieve the highest BREEAM standards in developing new homes with its development partners.
Strategic objectives
Realising...
Long term capital and income returns
Future growth
The Group looks to grow its property portfolio by funding and acquiring high quality newly developed homes. Get Living invests in homes with strong underlying fundamentals that it can acquire for a fair price and secure an acceptable gap between the income yield a neighbourhood generates and the cost of managing and funding that investment.
Value in operational efficiency
The Group manages its neighbourhoods effectively and efficiently managing the risks faced by the business in order to achieve its strategic objectives. This includes taking a long term view of its neighbourhoods in keeping with the changing needs of its residents. By providing green space and facilitating the provision of additional services, Get Living can increase income and create the opportunity to add value.
The Group looks to extend expertise in designing and delivering developments which remain exciting and relevant to residents for decades to come. The portfolio is managed by an experienced and innovative team where operating costs are tightly controlled to gain efficiencies as the Group continues to grow and is funded with a diversified mix of equity and debt.
Our Neighbourhoods
Space to play,
space to dream
East Village is Get Living’s first and flagship neighbourhood. Launched in 2013, the former London 2012 Athletes’ Village is now the largest residential rental scheme in the UK with 1,921 homes for market rent.
Through Stratford’s International and local stations, East Village offers links to key locations such as King’s Cross St Pancras and Liverpool Street in seven minutes and to the West End in 20 minutes.
East Village is a thriving place for residents and visitors, with 31, majority independent, retailers from cafes and restaurants to dry cleaners and a beauty salon, as well as an Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ education campus Chobham Academy, Sir Ludwig Guttmann Health & Wellbeing Centre – one of the NHS’ largest non-hospital buildings – and all the world-class sporting facilities of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
2019 saw the first new, post-Olympic buildings open within East Village, with 482 new homes launch at Victory Plaza in the heart of the neighbourhood.
Get Living continues to partner with affordable tenure provider Triathlon Homes, who offer a further 1,379 homes, to deliver a thriving mixed tenure and tenure-blind community of more than 6,500 people. The community continues to grow, supported by resident-initiatives like the E20 Football Foundation to Get Living-backed programmes and events from free Our Parks outdoor fitness classes to food festivals and intimate ‘After Hours’ gigs hosted within East Village retailers. The community space ‘The Hall’ by the East Village Trust opened in April 2019 and has already seen more than 6,500 local participations.
A further 1,500 homes are under development, with construction of 524 homes underway and due for completion in 2021.
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homes for rent
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majority independent retailers
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acres of green space
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homes in development
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Net Promoter Score, March 2020
Meet the residents
“We fell in love with East Village – with everything you need on the doorstep it was the perfect place to raise a family.”
Miguel Garcia
East Village resident
Meet the retailers
“There’s a real sense of community where people know each other and have a shared sense of care for where they live”
Rebecca Rosmini
Business owner, Signorelli
Central by name,
central by nature
Elephant Central at Elephant & Castle is Get Living’s second London location, with 374 high quality one to three-bedroom homes for rent across three buildings, alongside 278 student studios in Portchester House.
With views across the London skyline, over parkland or the courtyard garden, residents can enjoy the best of central London living. These Zone 1 homes are served by fantastic public transport links, including two Tube lines, national rail train services, a bus hub and cycle routes, and benefit from the rich culture and spirit of the area, with its array of eateries from across the globe.
Elephant Central’s resident Club Room is well used for events and home working, complete with kitchen, bar and lounge area and spills out onto the courtyard garden.
For Portchester House students the 20th floor Skylounge offers uninterrupted 360-degree views of the London skyline, with a games room, screening room, study space and a large dine-in kitchen to bring students together.
The 1.25 acre site on Elephant Road is complemented by Castle Square, the gateway to Elephant Park and a public space due to be home to a new pop-up shopping destination from the second half of 2020. Retailers within Elephant Central already include Sainsbury’s Local, Gymbox, Little Bear’s Nursery, and independent restaurants Tupi and Pizzeria Pappagone.
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homes for rent
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student studios
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independent retailers
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Net Promoter Score, March 2020
Meet the residents
“We feel like we’ve been here for years. The whole process with Get Living has felt really seamless and made easing into life in London really easy.”
Clarissa Frost
Elephant Central resident
Meet the retailers
“It’s great to be at the heart of Elephant and Castle... the residents who are now our regulars are lovely”
Federica Bigazzi
Restaurant Manager, Pizzeria Pappagone
Waterside living between Manchester and Salford.
New Maker Yards is Get Living’s first neighbourhood outside London, located between Salford and Manchester city centres within walking distance of Spinningfields.
Offering city living and canal side green space within Middlewood Locks, the first 275 homes opened in summer 2019. When complete in 2021, New Maker Yards will offer 821 one, two and three-bedroom homes.
New Maker Yards is built around three historic canal basins and bounded by the River Irwell – famously the border between Manchester and Salford. Making the most of the waterside, the neighbourhood has played host to a number of canal side events including yoga, partnering with Northern Quarter back-street jazz club, Matt & Phred’s, to host free jazz nights and with Our Parks to offer weekly free fitness classes along the canal path from Boxercise to Run Club.
Residents of New Maker Yards also have access to a resident club room with shared working space and regular free social events, organised by Get Living so they can meet their neighbours.
A champion of the local community, Get Living supports independent businesses including Salford-based brewery Seven Bro7hers and Manchester-headquartered Co-Op, and has this year partnered with Mind in Salford to back its vital services supporting the wellbeing and mental health of thousands of local people.
546 further homes for rent are under construction as part of the second phase of New Maker Yards and are due for completion in 2021.
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acres
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homes for rent
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homes under construction
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independent retailer
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Net Promoter Score, March 2020
Meet the residents
“There’s a lovely relaxed atmosphere around the place but you can trust the team to get things done”
Sally Norman
New Maker Yards Resident
Meet the retailers
“We could see that the development is designed to bring people together and as it grows will be shaped by the people who are part of it”
Keith McAvoy
Co-founder, Seven Bro7hers
Committed to sustainability
We completed a materiality assessment in line with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Reporting Standards (2018) and have written an ESG policy, both of which have informed our ESG Strategy which sets objectives for 2020.
Our ESG objectives include:
- submission of data to GRESB. Our intention is to achieve a score of four out of five stars or better by 31 March 2021;
- undertake sustainability audits of the majority of our properties;
- undertake a social value audit of our sites;
- incorporate ESG into our brand;
- review our procurement policies and those of our management companies; and
- review technology available to pursue ESG objectives, e.g. next generation automatic advanced meter readers and sensors within homes to measure such metrics as relative humidity, temperature, air quality, etc.
Current performance highlights:
- Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) – 99.5% of our portfolio is EPC rated A–C, with 87% rated A–B; and
- BREEAM and Code for Sustainable Homes (CfSH) – for all our neighbourhoods that participated in these schemes at point of construction, the commercial properties were rated BREEAM New Construction “Very Good” and the residential properties were rated Code for Sustainable Homes three or four stars (out of six stars).
Social value
Responsibility to our communities and neighbourhoods
We’re not just changing renting for the better; our neighbourhoods create wider social, environmental and economic benefits – also known as social value – for local and surrounding communities.
Everyone has a stake in social value creation – us, our residents, local communities and councils – and we know we must continually invest in our neighbourhoods to nurture this. Our role is to support local employment and local suppliers, become civic family members of the communities in which we operate, while pursuing a green and sustainable agenda.
Neighbourhoods anchored in their locality, that are sensitive to the local environment, are more vibrant places to live and where people choose to live for longer. Social value creation then grows through the lifetime of a neighbourhood, as relationships are built and partnerships are forged.
We are backed by long-term investors who share our values and who want to see our neighbourhoods continue to grow and thrive. We continually strive to support and enable social value creation; first at East Village, the former London 2012 Athletes’ Village, and now across the UK.