Having spent the last 20 years working in the UK Residential Investment market Nick Jopling has formed Square House LLP as a bespoke senior advisory and consultancy business for small or large stakeholders of the housing market in the UK.
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Aimed primarily at strategic and governance considerations the service is relevant for both businesses already established in the market and those considering entry to it whether they are incorporated in the UK or from overseas.
Over his working life Nick worked as an adviser and broker at Allsop LLP and CBRE. Most recently he was on the board as the Property Director of FTSE 250 Listed Grainger PLC the largest Listed residential Property Company in the UK. Nick has been appointed to both National and Regional Review Boards/ Task Forces to assist in policy making and is currently Co- Chair of the European Residential Council of the Urban land Institute having previously Founded and Chaired the UK Residential Council overseeing the publication of the Best Practise Design Guide for Build to Rent (Multi Family Housing) in the UK.
Contact
+44 (0) 7970 841832
nick@sqhse.co.uk
Location
Stratton Grange
Cirencester
GL7 2LR
During his career Nick has led many business divisions and disciplines and his experience includes:
- Strategic Land and Planning
- Public/Private Development structuring
- Development Consultancy
- Construction and Project management
- Fund structuring and Fund Management
- Portfolio Asset Management
- Property and Facility Management
- Research and Advisory
- FTSE 250 Listed Board protocols (Governance and Risk management)
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Square House is wholly personalised to the needs of each client whether appointments or contracts are short or long term with every project handled by Nick Jopling.
Challenges and opportunities in the market:
need
The shortfall of housing in the UK is one of the biggest political challenges with all political parties agreeing that there is a dire need to build more homes that are ‘affordable’ to a greater number of the population. The Barker Review in 2006 identified a need for 250,000 homes to be built per annum just to ensure some stability of house prices. This figure has never been achieved building a backlog and the Government has now set a target of 300,000 new homes per annum by the mid 2020’s.
potential
In 2017 there were 217,000 new homes built – a new high for many years which is encouraging but still short of the Barker target and requires a 38% increase to reach the 300,000 target in seven years. The Farmer Review of UK Construction (2016) highlighted that there were significant challenges and constraints within the capacity of the UK construction industry in particular a 25% net loss of British site workers over the next 10 years highlighting that there is a need to find alternative ways to build homes. The subsequent increase in both interest and capacity of Pre-Manufactured Methods of construction from component parts to fully modular homes is encouraging and is likely to increase significantly in the future.
RENTAL
One clue to meeting both Government targets and the Country’s needs can be taken from the census data between 2001 – 2011 (UK Census’s take place every 10 years with the next due in 2021) when 2.2 million new homes were built. In the same period the Private Rented Sector (PRS) grew by 2.4m homes – in effect the PRS could have absorbed every new home built and there would have still been a waiting list of over 200,000 households. The PRS has become the fastest growing tenure in the UK (as it has in the US) with almost 20% of households now falling in this category and almost 30% in London. The sector is worth over £1 Trillion pounds and is owned largely by Landlords with less than 10 properties* but this is changing rapidly with the introduction of large scale institutional investment into the Build to Rent (BtR) sector.
With over 45,000 new purpose built rented homes by large scale investors in the last 5 years and a total of 105,000 estimated to be completed by 2020** there is a new homes delivery source in the market.
The Square House (Consultancy) service is positioned to help advise any party wishing to play their part in helping Britain build more affordable homes to help reach the 300,000 pa new homes target the Government has set.
*Savills estimate 98% of Landlords own less than 10 properties although the remaining 2% own over 20% of the Private Rented stock
**Savills data published 2018
