A major influence for the rising importance of wellbeing is driven by wider societal awareness of health and industry initiatives. Setting the scene, Victoria Lockhart from the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) outlined the rigour and breadth of wellbeing engagement, and how organisations are integrating health driven approaches across the building lifecycle from design through to operations and occupant behaviour.

Industry Engagement

Customers are clearly leading the wellbeing movement and it seems the real estate sector and in particular Build to Rent yet to fully engage. In two surveys by the Velux Group and McGrawHill Construction presented at the event, 83 per cent of Europeans said they were concerned about air quality, while 60 per cent of homeowners were willing to pay more for a healthy home. Considering we spend 90 percent of our time indoors, it’s not hard to see why.

Commercial real estate may be engaging faster than the residential sector but ultimately consumer behaviour will lead disruption in the build to rent sector. Lessons could be learnt from the hotel sector who are a clear competitor for Build to Rent and are already ahead at incorporating wellbeing into their offer.

However, many investors present at the roundtable said more needs to be done in accurately measuring the “return on wellness” so as to be able to better benchmark prospective investments.

There was also some debate as to who needs to be the driving force, with investors saying that planners need to push developers to make the long-term decisions and to ask the questions that have not yet been asked.

Why invest in wellness?

While the Built to Rent sector is beginning to embrace the wellness trend, return on investment is still important, and the industry is not sure where the valuation for wellness sits. Demographics will change what is considered to be important, the younger generation are likely to expect the features associated with wellness to be the norm and that will change the industry.

Incorporating wellness

Wellness seems to be driven by a better understanding of resident needs, which factor in how build to rent operators incorporate health across the building development and amenity offer. Interestingly there was also a suggestion that wellness was a decisive factor for corporates looking to house their employees in healthy and safe accommodation, demonstrated by the popularity of WELL in Asia. Demonstrating that the customer is a driving factor, however many felt that there was a lack of appropriate benchmarks to truly scale wellbeing across the sector.

Benchmarking and insight are key 

Establishing a set of benchmarks that can measure wellbeing in a  development will be crucial to securing investor buy-in as the cost of investing in wellbeing-enhancing resident development is not yet transparent enough, usually quite expensive, and, as suggested above, it is not clear where returns will be seen.

However, despite the concerns over how to accurately measure wellbeing impact, new technologies are already starting to allow for better analysis. These range from monitoring air pollution levels, resident usage of certain amenities such as gyms and also data collected from strategic partnerships with wellness apps, such as Moda’s work with the hero app and 3D body scans so tenants can monitor their own health and fitness.

Looking forward, it is crucial that investors are not too short-sighted in their evaluation of wellbeing. Many acknowledged that younger generations are demonstrating a far more marked interest in such ethical practices, with health and wellbeing policies ranking near environmental concerns.

Building developments with wellbeing in mind is not only good for today’s residents but will also future proof what investment needs are tomorrow. This sentiment was further supported by operators and investors who don’t want to find themselves sitting on outdated, and worthless assets in the near future. And that will mean making wellbeing a core priority.

In summary the roundtable highlighted how wellbeing is not just a by-product of the build to rent sector and how operators are embracing the fact that home, work and health/fitness are becoming increasingly inter-related. This brings an increased responsibility for those in the built to rent sector to deliver buildings which will have a lasting legacy.

This was the second in a series of collaborative roundtables discussions regarding sustainability in the residential sector co-hosted by the UK ULI Residential Council & Sustainability Forum. This forms also forms part of the ULI Building Healthy Places Initiative which seeks to engage and drive knowledge sharing of health across the industry.Roundtable Programme can be found here: Beyond the Hype – Wellness in Build to Rent

Speaker and Panellists included:

• James Aumonier, COO, Long Harbour Group
• Neil Burton, Global Practice Lead for Greystar
• Charlotte Hopkinson, Head of Sustainability and CSR, Grainger
• Kirk Lindstrom, Chief Investment Officer, Round Hill Capital
• Ashley Perry, Build to Rent Consultancy Director, LIV consult
• Claire Racine, Associate Director – Upstream Sustainability, JLL
• Olga Turner, Co-Founder, Ekkist
• Jessica Vithlani, Building Manager, Way of Life
• David Williams, Development Director, Apache Capital

Slides:

Why Delivering Wellness Facilities is important to Greystar, Neil Burton, Greystar

International Well Building Standard, Victoria Lockhart

Authors:

Caoimhe Loftus, CRTKL and Sorrel Pompert Robertson, Blackstock PR