In the Australian market, where there isn’t pre-existing BTR product to study, we can at least understand people because they’ve been here for 60,000+ years. We have developed long-range audience lifestyle trend reports and customer segmentations for multiple BTR providers who need to know who their people will be and what they will want in the future. Without this audience understanding at the start of the project there is going to be a big graveyard of untenanted buildings that were designed to a yield schedules instead of humans.

Flowing down from understanding people, we are working with developers, architects and asset managers to define and design the optimal amenity offer. This is really a highest and best use exercise, making sure that every square metre creates its greatest value. To do this, we combine our Strategy and Design Department teams, which together include four in-house architects. This kind of team means we provide well-grounded guidance that informs and inspires the project architects. Without linking audience, strategy and design, we are all going to be stuck in an amenity arms race, delivering over-specified gyms for a lonely single tech-bro to use before popping a nootropic and sitting in an ice bath while the rest of the residents wish they had more to do in their apartment block.

The fund manager bows down to the gods of efficiency and symmetry. They want a scalable product – and they should get it, given what they’re paying – but the fixed elements of a BTR building need to be wrapped with local nuance and variables that respond to the specific place context. We are working with the developers, their brand teams and designers to understand how to localise an asset without creating unwieldy complexity. Without this grounding in place, BTR buildings will never feel like homes.