living | january 2020
'We expected more takers for two-bed apartments, but actually it is one-bed apartments people sign up for – even couples – because they use the amenities in the building and so don’t need so much space in the apartment,' he says. Like Heiko, Nick has a sceptical approach to cinema rooms and gyms. 'Things like that are good tools for marketing the apartments, for getting tenants over the threshold, but they do not give a good return to landlords because of all the equipment, cleaning and insurance. And they don’t get used if there is a good gym nearby,' he says. On the other hand, flexible lounge spaces and – a big surprise – spaces for quiet study and homeworking, turn out to be seriously popular. Cinema rooms are out, libraries are in. The other big discovery is that lobbies and entrance halls are complicated spaces, and that glamorous double-height boxes may not be the answer. 'Yes, you still want a sense of arrival, and you want tenants to feel that their home starts at the front door to the building, not just the front door to their flat,' Nick tells us. 'But you need your concierge in the right place, and you need it to be lively. There is nothing worse than a dark lobby stuffed with letterboxes.' Working at the sharp end of the BTR sector, property managers, Urbanbubble, have an acute take on what works and what doesn’t. And
Managing Director, Michael Howard, is a lot less sniffy about fancy amenities than cost-conscious developers. The twist is that the amenities he likes might not be the ones landlords or developers expected. 'BTR is still so new. We’ve probably 80 apartment blocks live around the UK, eight or nine in a big city like Manchester, and customers now have a choice, which is helping us learn what works and what doesn’t,' he says. The big take-away has been that every block is different. A highly socialised, community focused offer in one building works wonders in a block whose residents tend to be 30-something professionals. But the same approach (and amenities) are a turn off in blocks with younger – or older – residents, as Michael explains: 'We have a smallish block in central Manchester, so there are plenty of amenities in the streets around it, and we found what residents wanted was not the kind of stuff they could find outside, but space for friends. The tenants were mostly in the creative world, so we gave them a clubby feel, something a bit like Soho House, and that’s just what they wanted,' he says, referring to the upmarket club chain. Design has been influenced by the hotel business, particularly by Scandinavian hotel design. 'We learned that the lovely double-height lobby is useless if nobody ever lingers in it. We learned that large spaces that look great on the CGI
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