Shaping the future of build to rent: Quintain Living at Wembley Park

Nick Mumby: Well, hello and welcome to the Gowling WLG Living Sector podcast. My name is Nick Mumby, I'm a Partner in the Real Estate team at Gowling WLG and Lead Partner for the Build to Rent (BTR) subsector. This podcast forms part of a wider series of discussions and articles that are based around the living sector, and with a particular focus on living in London. Today, we're going to focus on the continually evolving BTR sector and I'm delighted to welcome James Saunders, the Chief Executive of Quintain, who is going to help me explore the factors shaping BTR in London today.

In an increasingly sophisticated market, we're going to look at a number of things, including how the asset class is evolving, what we need to see from both the Government and key industry players to accelerate the pace of delivery, and how we can create a greater choice and diversity of supply to meet Londoners housing demands and needs for the future. So firstly, James, thank you very much indeed for joining me and welcome to the podcast.

James Saunders: Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting me.

Nick: Excellent. Now let's start with the evolution of the asset class and Quintain's journey – can you talk us through that?

James: Okay. This is a pretty young asset class. I think anybody who works in the industry forgets that it's less than ten years old. Build to rent had been talked about in the UK market in my experience, for at least 15 years before that, but the conditions were never considered to be conducive - either land prices were too high or build costs were too high, and people were not preferring BTR over 'for sale'. And our company, Quintain, very much went on that journey.

At Wembley we were building for sale and then about 2015 we started asking ourselves the question shouldn't we hold some of these assets and rent them into the market? Because we could get equivalent capital values and have it create an income stream. But you need the right capital structure to do that. So, I'm aware that the market was talked about for a long time. And then there were a few factors that led to the acceleration of it, not least of which was the all the changes around the buy to let marketplace. That really started with a kind of changes that George Osborne put in place when he was Chancellor - changing the tax rules around buy to let making it actually less attractive to investors. In many ways that created some of the climate that the institutional, large potential professional landlords needed to come into the market. But there weren't the right capital sources. And then in the early days, the Government actually stepped in and created various debt guarantee funds to enable to help the BTR market get off the ground.

Our story is a little bit different because Quintain was a public company, was taken private in 2015 by Lone Star US Fund, with a specific purpose of taking the large residential consent we had - 7500 homes - and building out a build to rent asset. They gave us the capital structure that we needed, they allowed us to accelerate our development plans. And we sit here today with one of the largest BTR estates in the UK and certain the largest in a single site, in close to 4000 homes under management, under the Quintain Living brand.

Nick: Absolutely. And it's an amazing achievement. And we were talking just before the fact that you started Quintain, acquired the land back, in 2002. And then obviously there's a journey between 2002 and 2015, and 2015 is really when it when it starts to take off properly in the last ten years as it is now, has created an amazing community, and obviously delighted to see it recognised in The Sunday Times Great Places to Live survey ratings. And you must be delighted with the way in which that has come together. But talk to me a little bit about how you've seen that evolve and how you've gone about the process of creating that community.

James: Well, I think I think it all comes back to a master plan vision. The master plan vision was set. We acquired the land in 2002. It took us a couple of years to get the big master plan consent that we needed, and that very much was for a mixed-use place. But as I said the residential component was largely considered to be for sale. There were some student elements, and there are student elements that have been delivered today. And we really fully recognise that in order to make this an attractive place to live, we needed to change the perception of the place. At the time, the project was called variations of 'New Wembley' - because there was a new stadium that was being developed at Wembley City, because it was a mini city of itself. The project, and the place today, is called Wembley Park - and that is its historic name, it's the historic name of the area, and everything we have done there is really about trying to create a neighbourhood that people would find very attractive to live in, while respecting the amazing entertainment and sporting credentials that the Wembley site always had because of the stadium and the arena.

One of the keys to that transformation was the introduction in 2013 of the outlet centre - London Designer Outlet - that we built that really changed the nature of the footfall to the site, which up until then had always been event day only driven - going to a concert, going to a football match equivalent. Suddenly we introduced the first outlet centre in London. Now we have upwards of eight million visitors a year that come for that. That's twice as many people that come for anything in the stadium or the arena. So, we changed the nature of the site. We gave people a reason to come every day. That gave us the retail credentials to obviously build a lot more retail, and every single building that we have has got a retail or restaurant component underneath it, and that starts to create the environment that you need to persuade people that this actually is quite an interesting place with a lot of stuff going on, more attractive to live. Now, that's not the end of it because you have to deliver great public realm, great spaces, green spaces.

We're now just currently delivering the second phase of our seven-acre park. We have huge investment, close to £3 billion worth of investment that's gone into the Wembley site over 22 years. We have a residential community in Quintain Living of about 8500 people who live with us in our BTR estate. There are also 5000 student beds that are not Quintains that have grown up around us. And actually, this is how it comes full circle - there's a lot of for sale product that's now in around Wembley Park. Other developers - Barratt for example, Regal London for example - have come along built a really high quality for sale product that complements our rental product.

Nick: Absolutely. And going to that rental product for a minute, whilst obviously it's great that it has facilitated a wider ability for others, as you say, to come in and build around it and deliver different types of living product, On the rental side, do you think that having that additional footfall that you've had from the LDO and from all of the sporting events has raised the profile of BTR and maybe got people getting a bit more curious about what it is and thereby also raising their own understanding?

James: I would say yes and no. When people go to event days, they're very much focused on the event in question. But we take every opportunity to educate people. If you walk down Olympic Way or 'Wembley Way', as the fans call it, you can't fail to miss the Quintain Living signs. We're talking to people about the opportunity to live close to the entertainment that they enjoy. A lot of messaging over the years about, 'if you lived here, you'd be home by now', for the crowds going home - I think we've raised the profile of the place for sure, having those additional crowds coming in. I think people are in a very different mode on event day and non-event day. Our neighbourhood as we recognise it and we've built it is really a non-event day neighbourhood. And clearly on event day, things change. The crowds increase. We close off certain side streets to shield the residential areas. The retail, food and beverage is the same. And I think anybody who lives there understands the trade-off. And anybody who lives in London, anywhere near Highbury or Chelsea or Fulham, they're used to it. There's a way of working around it and living around it. Some days you don't move your car, sometimes you do move your car, sometimes you expect crowds and sometimes you don't expect crowds. So, I think it's helped raise our profile.

We do get people walking into our marketing suites on match days and asking about the product, but generally, that's a non-match day thing. We're open 364 days a year, I think we're not open on Christmas Day. But apart from that, people have an opportunity to view a product. And actually, a huge amount of our BTR product is actually leased online without people actually visiting the site at all. We've got fantastic 360-degree tours for inside the apartment and views outside the apartment. People have the confidence, and sometimes at different times of the year, it's 60% of people, and we are leasing a significant amount - typically, 2000 apartments we're leasing every single year. A significant proportion of those are viewing entirely online. So, they have the confidence in the product, they have the confidence in the place that they've heard of to rent with us.

Nick: Very good. And do you think that that there is a wider and more general understanding of what BTR is or what do you think that the wider population thinks, and what can we do to educate them better?

James: So, I don't think the wider population really understand build to rent or BTR or an acronym like that. They understand renting in London. They look at aggregator sites, typically the Rightmoves, the Zooplas, they look at the visuals that are put in front of them and the descriptions and they look at the price of that. That window gives BTR a very narrow opportunity to communicate its difference. And there are a lot of things that are different about BTR. The professional management of the buildings, the quality of the amenities, the amounts of amenity space and rooftop terraces that are given now, the furniture packs. There are a lot of things about BTR that you can't communicate in that really narrow digital real estate.

The industry has done its best to explain itself. And I think depending on what age segment you're looking at, particularly in and around London, if you've come out of purpose-built student accommodation, you've got an affinity with a professionally managed product type, and you're probably going to rent something that you can find that's a little bit more grown up than your previous purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) product. So, there's a decent level of understanding in an age group that's probably somewhere in their early 20s about this product type. I think the older you get, the less true understanding there is. So we spent a lot of time with digital tools to explain to people whether they are walking in to see us or just viewing online, actually all the things that you get with BTR because it's comprehensive and yes, BTR is at a premium to what we would otherwise call a standard rental product, which the market used to call PRS (private rented sector), but again, another three letter acronym that the market doesn't really understand.

There's a lot of points of difference, and I think it's incumbent on the build to rent industry to continuously explain why it's different, what they're offering and the value contained in that. We just did a piece of research in the last couple of months because we're looking at how we freshen up every aspect of our proposition as we launch new buildings. And we were surprised to see actually that there is so much more work to do to build that understanding. I don't think we help ourselves as an industry because we call it BTR, the Americans call it multifamily. But BTR encompasses the high-rise, high-density version in the city and single-family homes as well. So, we're confusing people. I think the investment community is beginning to really understand the difference. The property industry is understanding the difference and the range of things there. And there are industry bodies that are springing up, ARL for example - it's doing its best to educate the marketplace. But we have found with the increasing regulation of the marketplace and new legislation that's come into the marketplace. A lot of the nuances of this market are not well understood.

Nick: And that brings us neatly on to the next point, which is Government. So, we've talked about more individuals, but it's obviously key for the Government to understand it. We've got a relatively new government who've come out with some fairly aggressive figures for housing delivery, and they're expecting BTR to take up a reasonable amount of the of the numbers within that. Where do you think that the Government sits with all of this? How well do you think they understand it? And maybe we can come on to talk about some of the things that are going through Government at the moment in terms of renters' rights and planning.

James: So, I think the Government fully recognises the role that BTR has to play in regeneration and hitting some of the quite significant housing targets. BTR represents a very small part of the rental market at this point in time, but it has a very high growth potential. I have seen people quote figures that BTR could represent 10% of that housing delivery, and I think that's probably true, but the conditions all have to be correct for that. There has been a huge investment in BTR and a huge number of planning consents given to BTR in the last five years as people gathered enthusiasm for it, and viability wasn't really in question.

I think what we're beginning to see right across the BTR sector is that viability is becoming more and more challenging for a number of reasons. And it's the same as probably every asset class in the property industry. Construction costs are higher than they used to be, labour costs are higher, cost of finance is more significant. And there's been a lot of new regulation that's come into the marketplace that everybody is stepping up to, but it's driving cost into the system. Any developer before they start a project has had to have answered that question, is this project viable? Can I make the returns that my investors expect us to make? Can I meet all of the, not just the planning requirements, but the regulatory requirements, the fire safety requirements that have come into the marketplace? And that's challenging. Viability is not a given in the current marketplace. And I think we're beginning to see that in the new starts for BTR schemes, for the number of BTR schemes that are currently being reworked in London. When I talk to my peers across the industry, everybody is wrestling with the same challenges. We want to build more, we want to do more. We recognise this as an asset class that people want. It's good timing, but our appraisals has got to work, and our funding has got to be available. And those are relatively new challenges. But given the macroeconomic environment, I think there are challenges that are going to persist for a while now.

Nick: I think that's absolutely right. And obviously, the discussions that we have with our clients on all of the deals that they bring forward and discussions around the regulations that are being brought forward – so renters' rights, for example, is something which is being brought out as a blanket policy across any rented accommodation. And of course, I think some of the principles behind it are very sound and well thought through, but they are definitely trying to achieve something which doesn't necessarily work for all asset classes.

James: I agree with you. We fully support the intentions behind renters' rights and the abolition of section 21, the mandating of home standards. We agree with all of that. And the BTR industry is operating absolutely at the right end of that spectrum with professional landlords and high levels of maintenance. But you're right that what the Bill does is it treats every living sector for rent the same. And there are huge differences between the top, the middle and the bottom end of the market. But yet we're all asked to respond the same way. And that's going to be challenging. It's going to drive significant operational changes for a BTR landlord. And some of those will result in higher costs. And some of them will further affect viability. And they're challenges that we're going to have to step up to because we fully respect that the regulation is coming and it's going to come later this year. But all of this creates an uncertainty for investors. And if you're struggling with an appraisal and a viability already, and you're looking at the further interruption, disruption that these changes which are fundamentally going to make, it's going to stop a number of new projects happening, for sure. We'll only know with time, frankly how the impact is done. There isn't really a precedent we can look to, to other markets to know how this is going to perform. You have a lot of regulated markets in Europe. You have rent control in markets like America, but none of them are going to operate quite the way we're operating. The legislation draws from various different sources. And it treats all asset classes the same. I think over time, the problems are going to become obvious.

Nick: Yeah, I agree with a lot of that. It's just difficult trying to work out exactly how a lot of this is going to be implemented and whether or not the structures are going to be in place in order to deal with some of the consequences and the fallout. And I think that's the bit for me that doesn't seem to have been thought through quite as clearly as the underlying principles…

James: I agree with that. I think the things that we worry about and our peers worry about is this the although the legislation is going to affect the rental landlord. There's a lot of dependency on the court process and the First-tier tribunal to regulate this marketplace. If there's one thing I think we've all understood since the year since Covid is the massive capacity constraints in every aspect of a process that involves a court or a tribunal. We experience it already when we have interactions with courts around lawful eviction of non-paying residents. It's taking between 18 and 24 months to get into court for some of these situations. I think the perception is there's going to be a significant number of cases heading towards the courts, and there needs to be a dramatic increase of capacity. Now the Government says it's got this, so, let's see what happens.

We also are aware that new bodies and different tribunals will be responsible for other aspects of the regulation, of this law. And all of that, they need to be operating at capacity as well. And if they don't have sufficient capacity, it's just going to create a massive handbrake on the industry.

Nick: And this we've already seen in a different area through the Building Safety Regulator and the issues that have come back with the backlog of processing those applications. And whilst I understand that things are now starting to move a little bit better, we've got the potential benefit, but also the potential problems that are going to be created by a reformed planning system where again, certain aspects, certain applications are going to be preferred. There might be a slightly easier process, more of a zoning type approach. And then we're going to end up with more planning permissions coming through. But then if what we've seen so far continues, you'll then get a backlog where you've unstopped the beginning bit. Then you can't start because you've got to wait for your various different gateway approvals, but the building safety regulator is backed up. How do you see any of that coming forward? And do you see there anybody talking about how we might deal with any of that?

James: Well, I think more and more people are experiencing this. We recognise and welcome the changes to planning that are coming, but none of that will work unless there's actually an increase in number of planning officers to deal with it. And with local authority cuts, that's one of the areas that has suffered in the past. So, there's a capacity issue there. On the Building Safety Regulator - this is a new regulator that has been set up, it's dealing with not just new applications of new buildings, but it's dealing with remediation of existing buildings. And it's dealing with anybody who's entered the scheme unexpectedly because, for example, their building inspector became insolvent. They're suddenly no longer in the transitional period they were in under the guise of the Regulator. I think it's pretty well documented, the regulator needs to build capacity really fast. There is a shortage in the UK of the number of building inspectors who have been being asked to retrain to do this job. And I think there's some structural issues there in terms of are individuals prepared to retrain? Do they have the right PI insurance to operate in this space? Are they comfortable? Because the regulator is relying on groups of externals that are put together to do the assessments.

At the moment, that's translating into significant delays. I've seen freedom of information requests that were done that demonstrate there are over a thousand applications that are still being processed, and people need to have confidence of how long it's going to take. Otherwise, buildings are going to be completed, or not even started, without the requisite approvals. And I've got a live experience of that - we are working very closely with the Regulator, and we hope to have a successful outcome. But it's been significant in terms of the time it's taken so far.

Nick: And I'm sure if we aggregated the number of units that were across those hundreds it would be a substantial number. And these are all units that could be delivered and therefore could be occupied over two-to-four-year timeline for them to be completed and, and available for occupation.

James: That's right. And everybody when they did their appraisals and cash flows, they built in the approval periods for this. But so far none of the approval periods are being adhered to. And that goes to the RRR (return on rental revenue) of the project that goes to the appraisal that goes to investor confidence. We need to simplify all of this stuff, and we need to be able to stick to some of these timelines to be able to achieve the unit delivery that everyone's aspiring to.

Nick: This always strikes me as something where we talk about how we could accelerate the delivery of units. Actually, it's not so much looking at, we need to encourage new projects. It's actually the projects are already there. It's we need a better infrastructure to be able to process the various different requests and requirements and actually get them on site.

James: Yeah. Construction and development is a multi-stage process. The bit that the public sees is when it starts coming out of the ground, but there are years before that and there years after that, that are all part of the process. And every stage of that needs to be as efficient as possible. I think we've got some challenges. The Government has to create the climate for all of that to happen, it has to create the climate where international investors want to come in and deploy their capital in the UK as opposed to other places. Developers have to feel confident that they can get their returns. Contractors have to feel confident they're going to get paid and not be left, particularly on fixed price contracts, with very burdensome contracts that they're expected to deliver with timescales that are changing. And the end of the day we've got to feel confident that that we have a product that people want that are prepared to pay actually what we need them to pay to justify the investment up front.

Now, on the demand side, we have no question - the Wembley Park estate is operating at 95% occupancy. We are very lucky to have a real mixture of people living with us - from 18-year-old students from different countries, through to young urban professionals from London, and families, and significant numbers of older people. So, it's very diverse the group of residents that we have. We know the demand is there. But what they do expect is their buildings to be run efficiently. We expect them to be safe and secure. They want a stylish building to live in. I think what is changing, as we learn more about the market, is their use of amenity space and the type of amenity space we give them is changing. You can imagine immediately after Covid, there was a huge rush towards a lot of work from home type spaces. Five years on, we are evaluating the usage of those spaces and whether that still is the best use. And without question, we will continue to provide it. But various experiments we've had into small office spaces inside our BTR, there are projects like that that we may do something different with that space going forward because people are changing in terms of how they use this product and some of it is education, some of it is because we're attracting a different type of customer that wants something different.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. And that's always interesting isn't it. Looking at who is your customer base. I think a lot of people when they think about BTR, they think about it as something for young professionals. But obviously that has changed quite dramatically. And a lot of this comes obviously through design and through the delivery. And you've been fortunate enough to see the evolution of BTR buildings right the way through from first generation to, however many generations you think we've got to, to now. And I'd be interested to hear your view on that. How do you think that they've changed? What can you draw from the way in which they've evolved?

James: So, I think they're probably three or four generations of product. The first generation was very much converted 'for sale' product. We ourselves took buildings that we actually designed to be sold. We removed a couple of apartments, we created amenity space, and we then held that product and rented it into the market as BTR. It actually performed extremely well. The buildings were popular and remained popular and it was very efficient to run. We then worked with American designers and some American operators to kind of guide us into a slightly bigger vision, where we were trying to bring in more of the features that we thought would enhance the buildings - greater use of amenity space, significant amount of space dedicated to balconies and roof terraces, and features drove operational efficiency. That was a really good exercise. From then on in, it's become an exercise in really pushing the efficiencies and the environmental credentials of the building and thinking carefully about the amenity space that people wanted. And at the beginning there was a bit of an arms race to try and build the most spectacular amenity, and we've got some absolutely fabulous roof terraces, leisure features, gyms and lounges, and some are really well used, and some are not so well used. And then of course, after Covid, we had a big push into work from home spaces because we learned through the Covid experience, people were having to work from home. We weren't allowed to use the social spaces during the pandemic. But immediately after that, when people were still predominantly working from home and finding their hybrid working patterns, work from home became a really big thing. And they still are a big feature of our buildings. But some of the choices we made in those immediate periods after Covid, including creating cellular offices and various other things, perhaps we're going to do less of that in the future.

What remains perennial is a great lounge, the gym, the roof terrace. And then our most recent building, Luna, it's the proximity to the park that we've built. So, we're perhaps asking our buildings to do less because we're putting them in an environment where actually the resident can get more. So, I think it has been an evolutionary journey, and I don't think it stops there. I think the key is to keep listening to the customer and knowing what they want.

Nick: And you talked a little bit about the obviously part of the technological advances in terms of what you can deliver as a viewing experience before people actually move in. How do you integrate technology and what do you take from that within the buildings? And does that inform your decisions on what you might do with a new building?

James: Well, there's a lot of investment in marketing technology. There's a lot of science that goes into the marketing full stop in terms of understanding your audience and where your audience is looking. In the buildings themselves, we've had a few very simple rules from the outset. One is that we embed fibre optic broadband in all our buildings, and not just to the basement, but all the way into the apartment. That's something that we've done at Wembley Park since 2008. Even in the resi-for-sale days, we were fibre optic pioneers and actually ran that network ourselves for about ten years. We've now transferred it to a professional operator because the market caught up in that regard. So, we start with great broadband and that's really important because off great broadband, you can hang endless devices and appliances.

We work with really good suppliers. Most of our apartments have white goods from Samsung, and we have a really strong partnership with them. We think carefully about the types of white goods that we put in and how they are particularly looked after. We are tracking very carefully our utility consumption and trying to manage the efficiency of the buildings because that translates into better value for our customer. The buildings themselves all have got high EPC ratings, which means that they're very energy efficient to begin with. I think that's important. We have seen over the years, so many brilliant, but not so relevant, technology presentations about all the other bits of kit you can put in an apartment, the sensors and the stuff that you can put in that track, every aspect of behaviour. Some of them are, I would say slightly intrusive. And we have chosen not to deploy those in our buildings. And actually, we don't need to know that level of information. What we do need to know is use access control to know who's in the building and keep people safe and secure. But we principally want to know who the customer is, what they want, where they're commuting in and out from. How can we help with that? We ask them regularly, what amenities are missing. What would they like to see, both in the building and on the park itself. And they've told us about which shops and restaurants and services that they feel they need, which is great. And we do our best.

Recently we introduced, because we've got a large Chinese student population, a Chinese supermarket, which has really done well. So, we can enable this stuff. It's not overnight. But that's not using smart technology. That's literally asking people the old-fashioned way. What do they want? And there's no surrogate for that. We will spend our time and effort trying to understand our customer. And sometimes that involves sitting down with them and literally talking to focus groups over pizza and beer and wine and they tell us what they think and what they want.

Nick: Which is very interesting, and it's great to hear that there's a good mix of different ways of drawing out the information. And presumably that also helps with dealing with investors and reporting and being able to gather all of that data from both the technology and the and the old school systems and producing really good confidence and that it is a robust and investable product?

James: Yes. I think we're lucky that there is good software that exists, largely American software that's been brought into the UK market and customised. And there isn't really one software stack that everyone's using. People are all accessorising it differently. We've gone one way and some of our peers have gone the other way. What we're all trying to get to is really good transparency on the customer, the rents that are being paid, the ancillary income, obviously our costs in terms of operating. And then we're using that data in lots of different ways. We are using that data to talk to investors. We're using that data to report to our shareholders. We are using that data to help us design new buildings as well. And I think I haven't really worked in a market with such good access to data before. So, we really can cut and dice it many different ways, which is why it's worth the investment and the time to gather it.

There are always challenges about how you present it. And I think there are quite a lot of norms, particularly from the US market, who have a lot of experience in what does this product look like and how does this perform? And we need to understand what the investor norms are. The investor KPIs are because then we can tune our responses to that. But we're learning all the time. And we're going to have to go through another learning curve when new legislation comes in, because it's going to change the way our buildings operate. Renters' rights will get rid of ASTs, there will be no fixed term tenancies - everybody will be on rolling tenancies. When you manage a very large estate like we do at Wembley, it's obviously very helpful to know when people are in principle leaving and theoretically leaving. And many of our customers come to us because they know renting for them is the solution they need now. And they have a term in mind. So, they're very focused on the term, and then we've been able to respond to that. When you move to a world where you have just rolling tenancies. Mindsets are very different. Our concern is we're going to have to manage our costs extremely carefully to make sure the buildings remain efficient and as occupied as we want them to be.

Nick: Yeah, indeed. And it's obviously going to be interesting to see exactly how all of that plays out, because, as you say, some people will come with fixed terms in mind. And actually the fact that they're on a rolling tenancy, they will still stay for the same periods of time. It will, however, give people that little bit of extra flexibility that if something changes midway through then suddenly they will move on. But that remains to be seen, how the data is collected or what the data tells us will remain to be seen as well. But hopefully it will become something which everybody can get comfortable with. And when we've got a bit of data to back up the fact that it hasn't really changed the overall profile of the amount of time that people stay, that actually that it removes that element of uncertainty that we were talking about earlier.

James: Listen, at the end of the day, we all want our residents to stay for as long as possible, or as long as it suits them to stay. That's how the relationships always work. That's why we make our buildings as attractive as possible. We invest so much in the neighbourhood so they feel at home there. That will always be the test. What we don't want to see emerge is a very short-term market where people are coming in exploiting the new regulations to only come for a very short period of time and then move on. That doesn't really help build community, that doesn't help us stabilise our buildings, that doesn't help us mature our investments for our investors. There are lots of unintended consequences when new legislation comes in. And I think we've just got to all work together, work through them. And hopefully over the next few years, it'll settle down. But you come back to the fundamentals. Is this an asset class that people want? Absolutely, yes. Are we still at the beginning of this journey? Yes, I think we are. For me, we've got to make sure that we that we create the environment where we can continue to deliver product and a significant amount of product because we can make a really big contribution to the housing market. But it needs to be viable for developers. And I think we're right on the edge of that at this point in time, let's hope we all get through that.

Nick: Absolutely. And at that point, I think we've covered an awful lot of ground. It just leaves me to say thank you very much to James, absolute pleasure to talk to you. And thank you for all of your insight.

James: Thank you.