The first edition of the Build to Rent Guide was launched in April 2014 and is available for purchase by clicking the ‘Guide Order Form’ button below.

ULI UK’s Residential Council has published Build to Rent: a Best Practice Guide, a seminal industry guide for the residential sector. The report is sponsored by the British Government’s Private Rented Sector (PRS) Taskforce.

The Guide advises that developers entering the Build to Rent sector should have a clear and serious focus on their customers. It argues that it is as important to deliver high quality homes as it is to offer high quality customer service to their future residents. The Guide also calls for new institutional landlords to embrace the idea that tenants should not just rent their flat, but instead feel that they are renting the whole building through the lifestyle amenities and community facilities offered – effectively creating new private rented communities.

Housing Minister, Kris Hopkins, writes in the Guide: “With millions of people renting their homes from private landlords, it’s vital we do all we can to increase the numbers of high-quality properties on offer. This best practice guide from the Urban Land Institute, developed by a volunteer Steering Group of ULI’s multidisciplinary members, offers clear information about how to deliver the best quality homes for tenants – whether as an interested investor, or a developer looking to move into this market.”

The Guide has been developed in response to the increasing demand for accurate, unbiased information in the UK residential sector around the potential for an expanded, scalable and high-quality PRS market. It aims to identify the key points of difference between property that is built to rent and property that is built for private sale. The Guide argues that Build to Rent is focused around lifestyle and not just a roof over one’s head.

Nick Jopling, Chair of the ULI UK’s Residential Council and Executive Director of Property at Grainger plc, the UK’s largest listed residential landlord, said: “This Guide is a best practice document that we hope will become a useful reference tool for the UK residential market. In fact, our ambition is for it to become a benchmark for everyone involved in the design, delivery and ownership of Build to Rent property; as valuable as the British Council for Offices’ Specification Guide is to the office sector.

It is not a house-building manual. It tackles what has to be done differently for the successful delivery of high-quality and wide-ranging UK Build to Rent housing, in contrast to building ‘For Sale’. It considers location, scale, the exterior, the public and private interior zones, the services and how, if everything is taken into account, this should make living and working in a purpose-built rental building a great experience – and a concerted choice for many more people in the UK.”

Andrew Stanford, Chair of the British Government’s Private Rented Sector Taskforce, said: “Reinforcing its commitment to building a bigger and better private rented sector, the UK Government charged the taskforce with facilitating a design, construction and management guide for build to rent housing development. We are therefore delighted that ULI UK and its members embraced this challenge and with such great results.

There is no doubt that the guide will be of considerable benefit to all build to rent partners, including the tenants who will have increased housing choice as these new schemes are built and the long-term investors who want to ensure that their customers needs are fully met.”

Russell Pedley, Director at Assael Architecture, said: “Our research, and working with this multi-disciplinary ULI team across the whole spectrum of the delivery of professionally managed large-scale PRS, has enabled us to draw out the design differences, that not only identify the efficiencies that help improve the viability and durability of Build to Rent. It demonstrates that with the right approach, it can help foster communities in a building that are easy and fun places to live for singles, couples and families, and combined with strong integration of the public realm, can bring on early regeneration of a place.”

Copies of the Guide are available to order online priced at £45 for ULI members or Public Sector and £95 for non-ULI members.

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