UK: Vita Group has launched uhaus, a BTR brand which includes bills, cleaning and other services included in the rental price.
Vita Group opened the doors to its first BTR scheme at the start of 2021. Vita Living Circle Square East was the first of two towers at Manchester’s Circle Square development to open with its North tower opening in Q3 of 2021. Amenity rich, with resident lounges featuring places to work from, a gym, private dining rooms, the buildings achieved stabilised occupancy ahead of schedule.
The new brand has been conceived to cater for post-pandemic flex living. Russell Hayes, Vita Group director of residential, said: “Let’s be clear, Vita Living was and would still be considered a state-of-the-art build-to-rent brand, offering a product which provided a very high standard of urban living. However, our habits surrounding the way we live and work have changed more over the last five years than they have in the two decades which came before them, and whilst today there are BTR products launching to the market which mirror Vita Living’s product offering, we strongly believe that that product offering doesn’t meet the needs of today’s residents. Through regular in-building research, as well as Vita Group’s large research projects, we identified that new working and living habits required new, purposefully designed spaces to create a cohesive build-to-rent ecosystem for today’s resident. It’s why we’ve invested millions into what we believe represents the future of BTR, uhaus, a brand which aims to tilt the balance of daily life in your favour.”
The company says Vita Living’s resident population was spending more time at home than ever before, and their apartment was being called upon to be more functional. Vita Living’s amenity floors, while they had been designed to be functional resident spaces which residents can work from, hadn’t been designed for the scale in which working from home had been adopted in the building. Around 86 per cent of the building’s population worked from home, just under a third of which (29 per cent) worked from home every day.
Hayes said: “Getting work-from-home right was, and will remain crucial to the uhaus proposition. We firmly believe that if you’re designing amenity floors which try to be both co-working and resident lounges at the same time, whilst they’ll be functional to an extent and they’re aesthetically pleasing, they’re not what residents need. We’ve invested millions to create office grade co-working floors, floors which we believe rival those you see on offer in the likes of WeWork or Spaces. They create a real point of difference in a crowded and competitive marketplace filled with gimmicks. Varying sized sound proofed bookable meeting rooms and call booths, beautiful office grade ergonomically designed desks and chairs, loads of places to plug in including importantly computer monitors, a break-out space with kitchen, these are stand-out components which are everyday in modern co-work office buildings but simply aren’t in build-to-rent environments being delivered today. It’s one of the components we’re really confident we’ve got right with uhaus, and the early adoption rate, and the response we’ve had from residents using the space echoes that, it’s work from home done properly. uhaus has also tailored part of its events programme to motivate, inspire and support residents, from wind-down events to help them switch off at the end of the day and inspire them when they have a thirst for to learn more.”
“If we can amplify the way residents work from home and also make it easier for them to switch off at the end of the day, they’re going to have a better quality of life. That’s really important to us, and it’s at the heart of the uhaus brand proposition, tilting the daily balance in their favour and amplifying each moment. The dedicated co-working space means people’s apartments don’t get taken over by work life, creating better separation, the events complement this, providing inspiration when it’s needed and separation when it’s not,” added Hayes.
The uhaus service proposition is described as an ‘Everything Included’ offering which is “much closer to a luxury hotel rather than a residential brand”.
“When we designed this brand, we regularly returned to the thinking, by doing X will a resident get a better quality of life as a result of what we deliver, if 95 per cent of the people who live in the building use of it once, if at all, it’s not adding value. So, we did a lot of work to really define what that service proposition includes, challenging the value add to the resident and questioning would it tilt the daily balance in their favour? Would it amplify their day?”
Alongside the coworking space, other resident amenities across the two buildings which include a gym, resident lounges and a 35th floor resident’s bar. There are also a number of bookable private dining rooms. A front desk concierge team is also on hand.
The uhaus residents’ rent includes gas, electric, water and WiFi bills, as well as housekeeping. Apartments are cleaned every two weeks with an option to book and pay for upgraded housekeeping services too such as ironing and laundry, appliance deep cleans and more frequent visits.
New residents can also take advantage of a complementary move-in service.
“The aim was to create a product which holistically responds to post pandemic living, where our homes became so much more than the place we sleep. uhaus delivers a level of service for its residents which hasn’t been delivered in UK residential before. It’s all conducive to living a more fulfilled lifestyle where you don’t have to sweat the small stuff like cleaning and laundry, and you can get on with enjoying the things which you love, that could be working or working out or it could even be going out whilst you’re staying in!, It’s living designed around the needs’ of the resident, equipped to make their life easier and create a harmonious place to live,” said Hayes.
