Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman. Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am absolutely delighted to welcome Hannah Chappatte. Hannah is the founder and CEO of Hybr, a curated rental platform for first-time renters. It provides young people with a one-stop rental shop whilst enabling operators to fill vacancies quickly with pre-vetted and engaged young tenants. Hannah launched Hybr straight out of university in 2019 after experiencing firsthand the problems in a student rental market during her time at Bristol University. Hybr now operates in nine cities and has raised £2.5 million from investors to support its development. Hannah is a Great British Entrepreneur and Montagu Evans Disrupter of the Year winner and has recently been voted one of Property Week RESI’s young Trailblazers. So now we’re going to hear from Hannah Chappatte on what motivated her to set up Hybr straight out of university and her ambitious plans for the future. Hello, Hannah and welcome to the virtual studio.
Hannah Chappatte
Thank you very much.
Susan Freeman
I think I’ll start off by saying I’m very grateful to Charlie Green, the founder of the Office Group and a previous Property She podcast guest for introducing us so, thank you, Charlie. And it was really good to have you as the voice of the under 30s at the Property Week RESI conference last week and I just wondered really how that was for you because you can’t have been to many property conferences in your career to date.
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely. It was my first time attending and being a panellist and actually being, having a voice, you know it was an honour to be given that, that privilege of being a representative of you know 2.9 million young, student renters, there’s 6 million renters under 30 in the UK so, obviously a, a big, big shoes to fill but no, I loved, I loved being up there on the stage, it was great to kind of give the voice of, of the Gen Z generation going in and renting and talking about the difference between Gen Z and millennials and how we need to cater for that young renter market, thinking about not only the rental journey and the tenant experience but also how to utilise spaces.
Susan Freeman
And did you, I mean one thing that people who are new to property conferences often say is, they’re surprised that there aren’t more women, I mean did you, did you feel that or did it seem a reasonable gender spread?
Hannah Chappatte
So, I went to Proptech Connect the week prior and then Property Week and I’d say it was quite similar split. It’d always be, it would be interesting for them to kind survey that so you could see the stats and percentage of women who attend these events, especially on the panels themselves. Definitely underrepresented, still got a long way to go. I’m sure you’d agree.
Susan Freeman
Yes. It’s getting better.
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely.
Susan Freeman
And congratulations, you were voted one of Property Week RESI’s 12 Under 30 Trailblazers so that’s a really good start.
Hannah Chappatte
Thank you very much. No, it was, it was a lovely evening to celebrate all the other kind of young people doing great things in this space as well.
Susan Freeman
No, that’s very encouraging because we do talk a lot and agonise about how to get you know more talented young people into real estate so, no, it’s good to have you as a role model and trailblazer. So, let’s talk about how you got into real estate because I’m sure it wasn’t you know what you were planning to do when you, I think you were at Bristol University? How did you come to set up Hybr and actually, why is it called Hybr?
Hannah Chappatte
Great question. It’s called Hybr, it comes from the word ‘hibernate’ so a safe place to hibernate away from the kind of chaotic, busy lives you lead and you want to go to a home where you can kind of you know be yourself, regain energy before you go back out there and of course we’re a tech startup so we have to make it punchy, it’s why it became Hybr, the hibernators. And in terms of kind of I started it, so I was a student at University of Bristol, I studied Liberal Arts, I graduated in 2019 and in my final year of studying, I was kind of thinking what to do, I was applying for all the consulting grad schemes. I really had only heard of the kind of job routes being law, banking and consulting, so I decided consulting was the one for me but ended up really hating all of the assessment centres and the kind of online exams and it really just, just draining me of energy, whereas every time I thought about starting Hybr because by that time I was already fixated with this concept of, ‘there’s a huge gap in the market’. When I thought about Hybr I was energised and excited and when I thought about consulting, I was anxious and exhausted so, I thought that was kind of a clear sign that as soon as I graduated, I should launch myself into that.
Susan Freeman
And how did you fund it?
Hannah Chappatte
So, I was working as a waitress still when I graduated from university. I think I was spending £25 per month on our Squarespace website so it’s not exactly like it cost me a lot to really begin. We were generating revenue from the get-go so, I graduated in 2019 and then after summer, I started cold calling landlords, landlords I’d rented from and landlords my friends had rented from, I was pitching the concept of Hybr and they were tearing it to shreds, telling me everything they hated about it and why they would never use it. It was really quite a horrible experience in some ways but it was brilliant because it meant that I could build a really robust foundation to the company and then I’d ring them back and pitch the next version, and the next version, and that’s really how we got our first customers on board. We then got their portfolios, I was using our simple Squarespace website and then I would go and stand outside libraries interviewing students, working out what they wanted from a platform, the kind of all in one platform, started matching the two together and then we kind of built it from there.
Susan Freeman
You make it sound so easy. So obviously you then started focussing on it full-time and you had your first fundraising, I mean how did that go?
Hannah Chappatte
So, I built out the business in Bristol, the city I knew the best, working with a real loyal community of landlords and students. Those landlords had portfolios in two other cities nearby so we scaled into those two cities, we’d broken even at this point because we were just spending what we were putting back in and it was kind of slowly growing out a team, winning a lot of entrepreneurial grants as well at that point and getting recognised in the press in those early days, just the support we were doing especially during Covid where were mostly, I was mostly a one-man band before I made our first hire. Really being a therapist to parents and students going through that really difficult time of you know what’s happening with university, will you be able to continue with our place or not and it really built up the business from there. After we’d shown that we could actually kind of scale and we were still a sustainable business model, I went out to raise our pre seed round, so we raised just under a million pounds at the beginning of 2022.
Susan Freeman
And you’ve got an impressive list of backers and I think you can probably mention some of them because they’ve been in the press haven’t they.
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely. Evelyn Bourke was one of our first investors, who is CEO of BUPA, Charlie and Ollie, you said, the CEOs of The Office Group, Debbie Wosskow, the CEO of All Bright, going to her next venture and also sold Love Home Swap and a lot of other kind of realistic professionals, landlords who own their own portfolios and really understood the concept from the landlord perspective, as well as principals and VCs and marketplace experts, people who’d scaled up their own marketplace consumer tech businesses.
Susan Freeman
And that’s fantastic because, you know to have those sort of entrepreneurs backing you, it really does give you confidence that you are, you’re on the right track. And you’ve mentioned you know Covid, the Covid period, because I was looking, you launched in 2019 and obviously beginning of 2020 we were all you know locking down so, so you were able to use that period usefully to do more market research and find out what students needed. So, let’s talk a little bit about what services you provide and how you differentiate yourself to the letting agents, you know who are out there, who normally a student would go to if they were looking for somewhere to stay.
Hannah Chappatte
So, just to kind of frame that within the context of our two key users, which are the students and the landlords, operators and agents. So, from a student perspective, traditionally you are either going to use a classified site like Rightmove where on average 75% of the time you’ll never hear back after you make that initial enquiry because the agents are inundated with enquiries, they can’t possibly get back to everyone and you’re being deprioritised, you’re, they’re prioritising professional renters over students. Rightmove and other classified sites are not catered to that student experience. Or, as a student you’re still walking up and down your hight street looking for agents that you can go and speak to but they only manage small portfolios, so a lot of the time you’re not able to really compare your options and find something that works for you or they will have already gone which creates a very chaotic and stressful environment. And also leads you kind vulnerable to exploitation of rogue landlords and scams. And then as a landlord, whether you are a private landlord or an institutional landlord, agent and operator, you’ve got two options. You’re either going to use a classified site like a Rightmove and OpenRent and again you’re drowning in enquiries, on average at Rightmove you will receive 36 enquiries per listing so you have to hire big in-house teams to manage all those portals, manage different agents you are working with them to try and find the right tenants to on board and you have the risk of human error and the wrong tenants ending up in your properties, which will cause a lot of pain and money in the long run. Or you’re going to use an agent to do everything for you but the traditional agents are going to cost up to 12% of the annual rent before you even look at property management solutions. So that’s very expensive, depending on the kind of portfolio you’re trying to build out. So to cater for those kind of two key problems from the two users, we built a curated vendor platform that aggregates all available homes across private landlords, agents, institutional landlords, the likes of Build to Rent, co-living, purpose built student accommodation providers so that as a student, you can come onto platform, you can get the hand holding and support that you need as a first time renter and we match towards an appropriate property or redirected towards a different one and finding the housemates and any add-on service that you need. And for the landlords, you have, can advertise your portfolios across Hybr and all of our partner channels to get mass exposure but we only send over pre-vetted, qualified, engaged tenants that are ready to move in, so that saves all of the inefficiencies and kind of back and forth that you usually happens in that lettings process and gives you access to direct bookings, and it’s entirely free to use until that point of you’ve actually confirmed a let.
Susan Freeman
It sounds brilliant and so this didn’t exist before, there wasn’t a platform that as a student where you could see everything that was available in one go.
Hannah Chappatte
You have international marketplaces based in India and China that focus on that demographical student and getting into just purpose-built student accommodation options across the globe but nothing that aggregates across the UK market focussing on both international and domestic students, short-term tenancies, long-term tenancies, anything that’s relevant for that audience with the support they need.
Susan Freeman
So it sounds fantastic and it’s the, I mean it’s the sort of thing where you think well, you know, why didn’t this exist? So, you’ve obviously spotted you know a really good gap in the market. And how do you monetise it because I think you say you don’t charge the students, how does it work?
Hannah Chappatte
So, we charge the landlords per successful booking, so we align ourselves with the landlords, only making money when they do and it really depends on the type of landlord, so if you are smaller HMO landlord, we’ll charge you a certain amount or for an institutional landlord, a different amount but it’s all about being a sustainable, scalable way to lease up your buildings, so we really plug in and be that extension of their lettings and marketing team.
Susan Freeman
So that sounds quite democratic and you talk about working with landlords that you trust, how do you build up the relationship, do you actually, do you see all the properties that you have because that’s quite a big ask?
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely. So, for private and HMO landlords, it’s within the self-onboarding, you, there’s HMO, do you have an HMO licence, land registry, EPC, ensuring you have the kind of those compliance checks in place and then we’ll get feedback as soon as a physical viewing has taken place so, does that match the video tour that you’ve seen and then we are introducing a kind of review system, the uber system, so that there’s kind of creating trust in the marketplace, just so important. And then from the institutional landlord side it’s a little easier because these are kind of well-known brands that we work with.
Susan Freeman
And how do people react to the idea of renting to students if they haven’t rented to students before because, you know, the image of the student is noisy, you know parties, you know up all night, rowdy, trashing the place, how do you deal with that?
Hannah Chappatte
I mean, talking about it at conferences and the impact we can have, I really feel like it’s my job at these conferences to try and demystify the student population, you know it’s not all the partygoers, first years, if you think about, when we speak to landlords, they say, ‘No students’ and we say, ‘What about a second year engineering?’ ‘Oh, that doesn’t count as a student’. You know, it’s that kind of perception of what does a student really mean? But there’s kind of three key reasons why the student market is so interesting. Firstly, from an investment perspective, it’s a recessionproof market in terms of economic downfall, people actually upskill and when you’re dealing with employment instability and squatters rights in the student market, that’s non-existent. Secondly, you’re talking about twelve month tenancies with no voids because we’re renting ten months in advance, so your portfolio is let every year for twelve months and so they really, the voids just do not exist in this market. And then lastly, just because of that consistent demand from different types of students, one big part of what we offer is the matchmaking so, if you’ve got a big building that has ping-pong tables and really fun communal areas and that’s actually a great environment for first years but if you have a house that you, with a spare room in it or if you have a small HMO property then you might want to say okay, I’m only going to have post graduates and mature students and PhD students, so it’s really about the fact that there’s a student population in the UK growing 2% year on year, we’ve got international students coming from all over the world to study here and that creates such a perfect environment for this consistent demand of students and you can really pick and choose depending on kind of who you want in your portfolio.
Susan Freeman
Okay, so you are able to convince landlords that this, you know, they don’t need to be concerned and that you can find the right type of occupants for their property.
Hannah Chappatte
I also forgot to say that you are also talking about having a UK guarantor and a student loan, which is also makes this a very safe bet from a landlord perspective, it’s not just relying on the individual but their UK guarantor and their student loan and sometimes even a bursary or a scholarship as well, especially if they’re international students and they’re actually funded from their governments to come to study in the UK and you get that rent upfront so it’s a really interesting market.
Susan Freeman
I mean this sounds like a really good idea because obviously one wants to encourage students, one wants to make it easier for them, so the local authorities in the areas that you’re working in, I mean are they supportive? Are they helping you with this? What sort of reaction do you get?
Hannah Chappatte
It’s such a big issue with planning permission, we’re just seeing a constant battle of developers wanting to build student accommodation but then actually going back to building commercial real estates because it’s easier to get planning permission than building residential accommodation, especially in the student market, and that’s because of resistance from the local council who get a lot of complaints from residents so, the kind of two key things here are firstly, again the demystifying students and the educational campaigns of the benefits of having students in your local community, we were speaking to someone from the Croydon Council last week who was saying how they really want to bring students to liven Croydon up as an area so they can kind of diversify and show it as more vibrant and get you know more fun bars and social places to come into the local area. So you know the educational campaigns of why students are really great to have in your local area and they can probably increase price points and it’s things like that and the second point is all about integrating students into the local community so, how can we ensure that students actually are not just there and they go after a year or three years but actually make the neighbours feel at home with their new neighbours so, what about tutoring or looking after the elderly, you know how can we ensure that students really feel part of their community because they’ll get a lot out of that as well, as well as the local community then opening their doors and being more accepting to having students.
Susan Freeman
Yes, and maybe we’ll talk about the idea of intergenerational living in a moment but I just wanted really to echo what you’re saying about students adding to the vibrancy because you only have to look at King’s Cross and you know having the art college there, you’ve immediately got a real vibrancy and people you know with red hair and green hair and it just really got the whole thing going, I think, so I think you’re absolutely right. So, I mean what, how do you scale? How many students have you got on your books now?
Hannah Chappatte
So we’ve got around 25,000 students on our books and we’re growing by about, so we’re getting around 2000 new users on a kind of bi-weekly basis, so we’re really trying to kind of accelerate our growth at the moment, especially kind of gearing up to the next rental season, which is really exciting. We’re closing out our seed round at the moment to scale across the UK, so we can be there to kind of service students as they maybe want to move into another city for an exchange programme and really be able to help our landlords who have rooms across the UK.
Susan Freeman
And there’s, there’s certainly room for growth isn’t there with so many students. It’s interesting, one of the things you mentioned when you were speaking at the Property Week RESI conference, you said that Gen Z is more risk averse and anxious than millennials and millennials are more optimistic and entrepreneurial so, I mean you’re Gen Z aren’t you? So how come you’ve gone this risky route?
Hannah Chappatte
I’m kind of on the cusp, on the cusp of, maybe I’m more millennial at heart. But I think the key thing around the kind of Gen Z, millennial breakdown, obviously it’s very kind of stereotypical and will never apply to everyone but I think the key thing is just to recognise that, especially when we’re looking at the youngest part of the Gen Z world, they’ve been through so much with Covid and you know exams being cancelled, being locked at home, with everything around the environment, no wonder they go in on the back foot and they see everything in the press about exploitation and scams, being taken advantage of, so no wonder when they get to university and they’re shaking in their little boots and ready to kind of pick a fight with anyone because they’re so, they’re so nervous, I think it’s so important for accommodation providers and operators of at any scale to recognise that and build processes around like how they can make sure that these young renters feel really supported, they know what’s happening next, they know why they can trust them and there’s always a kind of point of contact because we live in the generation where we’re used to everything to be instant, you know our groceries should arrive in fifteen minutes, Amazon you know same day delivery, so people expect that from every part of life and every service. When it comes to gas leaks and maintenance workers and that’s not really, that’s not the same world in real estate but you’d have to educate and help them understand what to expect and when.
Susan Freeman
Interesting isn’t it, you’re right, they have gone through a lot. And is home ownership still the goal for that generation or have we got to a stage now where you know with the different choices available in rental but that, you know, is regarded as a lifestyle choice?
Hannah Chappatte
I was speaking to one of the CEOs of a shared home ownership scheme the other day and he was talking about how residential prices have risen three times faster than income and how you know it’s just becoming more and more inaccessible, especially with how hard it is to get banks to lend you money due to kind of regulation limits and government schemes winding down around the kind of help to buy scheme that ended in May this year, so this creates so many barriers but I think in terms of looking at kind of intergenerational wealth and the opportunity that being a homeowner really gives sort of thing, of course people still look up to that, we’re in a aspirational society and people want to have the option to own homes and they should have the option to own homes. At Hybr, although we are a rental platform, we really believe that we want to be there from the first touchpoint and that consumer journey from eighteen but we want to then help you get on the property ladder, you know, before the age of thirty and then it really should be around that that you understand and at least have the options, you understand your financial health, you understand how to make the right moves to get to that position, so then you can choose but the problem is, without that education then people don’t have the option and they just definitely don’t have the resources.
Susan Freeman
It’s interesting because if you look across Europe where, you know rental has been sort of very much more the norm, people don’t regard homeownership as the way that they’re going to be able create wealth, they invest their, you know they rent, they invest elsewhere but I think in this country we still see homeownership as you know the way to increasing capital.
Hannah Chappatte
Mmm. It’s an interesting one because I think if even if I did really like the points around you know there’s other ways to make money and invest and I completely agree with that, not biased at all but I think everyone should invest in startups but I think that if you then invest your money and you do you know come out and profitable and you earn quite a lot then you are, the next step is to usually then invest in property, so kind of de-risking your strategy, I think that’s why real estate is a really interesting industry while we’re all in it because it’s a much more kind of guaranteed way of creating income than a lot of other options and again, I just think we should be giving everyone the understanding and the options of you know how they can, how they can create wealth.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, of course it’s not guaranteed because house prices go up and they also come down, so a lot of people do go into it sort of assuming that it’s only upwards so, just changing tack a little bit, do you partner with any entities, who are you looking to work with to really scale your enterprise?
Hannah Chappatte
So we partner with educational institutions of all sizes so, the big universities, LSE, Imperial, University of Bristol, as well as the smaller educational institutions, it might be music colleges, fashion schools, DJ schools, circus schools, language schools, business schools, so it’s really important for us to be there to support their community to find housing outside of hall of residence or if they don’t have a halls of residence then we can really replicate that for them. That’s kind of our key partnership strategy as well as working with international agents across the globe.
Susan Freeman
And how do they find out about you? Are you just contacting them all? Are they reading about you in the press, how do they, how do they know about Hybr?
Hannah Chappatte
Either through the press, through their students or us outreaching. So, every time we launch in a new city we’ll reach out to the big and small educational institutions to let them know how we can support their accommodation team and also their kind of student experience team as well.
Susan Freeman
So, would they then direct their students to your platform, is that how it works?
Hannah Chappatte
Exactly. Exactly.
Susan Freeman
And I mean are you partnering or looking to partner with real estate companies as well?
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely. So we work with agents of all sizes whether they’re a national agents or a local agent, as well as build to rent portfolios, co-living portfolios, purpose built student accommodation providers and we’re interested in speaking to the funders behind these different projects, developers, it was really great to meet some architects last week as well kind of hearing about the different projects that they’re working on, really wanting to integrate ourselves into this market to learn as much as possible and see how we can, one other interesting conversation I had last week is like how can we mobilise our student community to gather insights from what they really want from spaces and what they want from the property management experience to then give that feedback to these different developers and operators.
Susan Freeman
And I mean it’s such an important area, I must say I hadn’t thought about circus schools and you know all the other schools but you know we want to train people and we keep hearing how expensive and difficult it is to find rental accommodation and that rents are going up, I mean particularly in London, I mean how do students afford to actually find rental accommodation in central London that’s within a you know striking distance of you know the school or university that they’re going to?
Hannah Chappatte
It’s such a good question. Maintenance loans on average across the UK are at around £485 per month, so if you kind of look at that versus most rents across the UK for student accommodation, especially for purpose-built student accommodation, it does not match up, so it’s putting increasing pressure on the banks of mum and dad to support these students but we’re seeing that ability, I think it was another interesting conversation, point, that came out of last week, was someone, another panellist, was saying how it’s less about mum and dad’s bank accounts but anyone in the family, people were really having to group together and try and find spare cash to give to people who are studying because it’s too difficult to try and just rely on the maintenance loan as well as, you know, I mean a part-time job if you’re trying to study as well, so I think that’s why I spoke about this last week, it’s really all about thinking about how we can cater to different segments of the market and we can rethink how we use spaces so, less cinema rooms potentially that are underutilised and potentially, every room doesn’t need to have an en suite but how can we look at that structure of the building and put more rooms in so that the margins for the developer and the operating owners doesn’t decrease but the rents can, you know, decrease or they don’t have to be rising at the current rates and you know looking at the Spanish model and the US model where in first year it’s very typical to share a room, you have two beds and it actually helps people kind of find their feet and settle in better, especially if you have a good matchmaking algorithm, so you know and if we, we surveyed Indian students to like you know would they be happy to share with a family member or a friend and 70% said yes it that meant that they could save on rent. So how can we kind of think creatively around how we use spaces so that profit and margins don’t diminish because we know there needs to be that incentive for developers but also, we can find more affordable stock for young people.
Susan Freeman
So that happens at the moment? Is it more normal just to have a sort of single occupancy room?
Hannah Chappatte
Yep.
Susan Freeman
Have our students become too, too spoilt? Do you think they’re expecting their own room, en suite bathroom?
Hannah Chappatte
No, just because everyone’s trying to create these premium products for you know the higher end, for the top kind of 2% but it’s not possible for us or everyone to be targeting that budget and part of the market so, I don’t think it’s anyone’s become spoilt, there’s not the option there, so the optionality I think if we have more varied stock then that would just help cater for different segments of the market as well as the rise of the kind investor backed HMO portfolios that do have all the kind amenities and bells and whistles so that they do keep their rents lower and they’re creating really loyal brands with young people because of this, so yeah, it’s really great to see.
Susan Freeman
So, you mentioned the matchmaking algorithm, do you use a matchmaking algorithm?
Hannah Chappatte
We do, from a pre-vetted landlord, pre-vetted young renter, student, or we also are in the young professional space as well, we haven’t built one yet for housemates but that’s something we’re looking at by the end of this year.
Susan Freeman
I think that would be interesting, it will be interesting to see what that throws up. So, I mean have there been any surprises along the way, so obviously you started your business with certain sort of expectations, I mean has anything really come as a bit of a shock?
Hannah Chappatte
I mean definitely. Every week, every month. I think it’s just no kind of steepest learning curve you can really go through, so I think everything, everything is, just yeah, just a huge learning.
Susan Freeman
But in a positive way?
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely in a positive way, definitely in a positive way. I think it, it’s interesting how we started out very much catering for the HMO landlords so, our bread and butter was HMO portfolios, especially in Bristol and then we kind of grew that out in Liverpool and Lincoln and then what we started seeing is the rise of the institutional landlord as it becomes more, more expensive to be an HMO landlord, more private landlords leaving the resi space and institutional landlords buying up private residential stock and more and more of these really interesting brands popping up that want to target young renters because they want to catch that first time renter a year in advance so they can kind of continue renting with them as they kind of enter their adult lives and this became a great opportunity for us to build this best in class lease up experience that can help optimise their lettings and really kind of streamline how they let out their portfolios, so I think that’s been the biggest I guess shock and learning curve for us because we thought we were building a product for HMO and we really kind of have ended up building for so many different types of landlord types and they all kind of blur because they’re just kind of all got great rooms for young people.
Susan Freeman
No, and so you are, you’re seeing the private sort of buy to let landlords you know just finding it, leaving the market because they’re just finding it sort of not cost-effective.
Hannah Chappatte
Definitely.
Susan Freeman
No it’s interesting because I think somebody at the conference last week was saying that it’s not the case but certainly what I’m seeing is people just saying it doesn't, you know it’s not making money and they’re moving out of the market.
Hannah Chappatte
I think it’s happening, it’s always exasperated and exaggerated slightly in the press, it’s not happening the rate that everyone presumed it would but we’re still seeing it on a kind of monthly basis and we’re seeing some really interesting new kind of portfolios and the rise of you know, if you look at the US or the European market, 60% plus of the rental market is owned by institutional landlords, whereas it’s been sub 5% in the UK and we’re really seeing that shift at the moment.
Susan Freeman
No and it’s, it’s gone quite slowly so it’s been, it’s been about ten years I think since the first build to rent sort of purpose-built scheme in the UK because we just didn’t have an institutional rented sector so it’s, you know, it’s all very, very positive. Now we touched on intergenerational living before and I would be really interested to hear you know how you see that working, you know do you, do you see like younger people, students, actually being able to happily co-exist with older people and how would that work and what would the benefit of that be?
Hannah Chappatte
There’s two different models. So, firstly, we’re looking at you know why should we even explore this. The kind of under twenties or the kind of mid-twenties market part of society and the senior living sector of society are two of the most lonely, you know people who really struggle with loneliness and if you look at some examples in the US or Switzerland, they’ve really managed to problem solve for this by combining the two intergenerational living so, you have in Switzerland, the reason why they did this in Geneva is you have these very old buildings where people have been living there for years and you have students wanting to move there to study in Geneva but there’s no accommodation because people have owned these buildings for years and they’re not renting them out so to encourage people to make use of spare rooms, they created a scheme were seniors can invite a student to live with them and the student is pretty much gets the accommodation for free or pays very little but they have to be there to support that person, who is usually in their kind of in their eighties here so, maybe with the kind of weekly shop and just helping around the house and just being a kind of friendly, friendly neighbour and that actually works really well because it means that higher education is a possible for everyone no matter what budget and background you come from because you have free accommodation when you study and it means, it’s quite nice if you’re moving to a new city, you have that kind of familial feel and the older person is supported and has a young person around. So, that’s quite an extreme case. In the US, they have examples of more kind of retirees, buildings with retirees and it’s kind of again a bit of extra over senior living and younger people living there and it just being a really nice use of space because you have the older people helping with homework, you know to whatever they kind of need to do in their termtime while studying, kind of being there in the tutoring aspect and you know they’re just being that exchange of ideas and it really being about creating a supportive environment and again usually it is at a slightly discounted rate because it’s about creating a community. So I think there’s lots of interesting examples but it’s, we should definitely explore before we need to make use of any kind of space in any building.
Susan Freeman
And it’s interesting in the States, I think at least, one of the universities actually built accommodation on the campus for their retired professors and so they sort of captured you know all that experience, people are there and the students get the benefit of that and the retired community get the benefit of having young people around who can help them with things. I mean it sort of goes back really to the way I suppose we used to live and is it something you are sort of actively looking to take forward or is that something for later?
Hannah Chappatte
Well, thanks to you, I’ve got my coffee with Honor next week, who’s really spearheaded you know lots of later living developments, so I’m really excited to speak to her and see whether we can set up a trial in the UK. I think going back to one of your questions actually, I think to get this right is all about the matchmaking, it’s all about the vetting and ensuring that we’re getting you know young people who are looking to get the support and be integrated into local community and potentially get discounted rents. I’m looking for older people that really are struggling potentially with loneliness and wan to be around young people and also want to kind of give back and support that young person through their studies.
Susan Freeman
And that’s for our listeners, that’s Honor Barratt of Birchgrove, who has done an amazing job of creating communities for older people and I mean really you know understands how that works, so I think it’s going to be a very interesting conversation which you’ll have to tell me about. So, we talked about the younger generation and one of the things you know people say is that the younger generation is more concerned about climate change because it’s going to affect them more I suppose and decarbonisation, I mean is that something that you, you see or, or is that not right?
Hannah Chappatte
I think the surveys definitely indicate that young people are very anxious about global warming and want to be more sustainable but they haven’t necessarily understood how they can have a positive impact and that also always goes back to topics discussed in these conferences where people give examples of, you go into a purpose-built student accommodation unit in the middle of winter, students have the doors wide open, the windows wide open and they’re having you know hour long hot showers and we’re not, it’s not to say that that student wants to see the world crash and burn and hates polarbears but actually that they just haven’t understood and connect the dots that that’s, that impact negatively hurts our environment and so this is why educational campaigns are so important. An example of this is one of our landlords, We Are Kin, have a little polar bear next to the shower to kind of control your water usage so whenever you are having a, using the hot water for too long, the polar bear starts slowly drowning and ice cap’s melting around it so it’s really kind of clever ways to visualise your impact and help people understand how they can be more, more sustainable.
Susan Freeman
Interesting because I would have thought that now you know people at school are taught more about climate change and the affects and that you know students would actually be much more aware but maybe they’re used to being at home with their parents saying ‘turn the shower off’ you know ‘turn the light off’ and that’s more I suppose a cost saving thing than anything else. So, just Hannah finally, obviously you have made huge progress in the few years you’ve been running the business, I mean where do you hope Hybr will be in say five years’ time?
Hannah Chappatte
Great question. We’re building the go-to first time renter platform where students and young professionals can come on finding the educational content and support they need throughout that journey, be matched towards an appropriate property and really help build up their credit score so that they understand that financial health and can kind of get on the property ladder and they can access any kind of add-on service they need throughout that journey whilst building the most efficient way to lease out your buildings for the kind of growing private and institutional landlords in the UK. In five years, we’ll definitely have expanded internationally, whether that’s the US or into Europe and I’m sure we’ll have found more ways to kind of introduce interesting new products that creates a win-win, so really creates that great environment for young renters and landlords to happily rent together.
Susan Freeman
That’s brilliant. Well, thank you so much. Keep me posted on how things go with the intergenerational living, I think that sounds great and thank you so much for your time today.
Hannah Chappatte
Thank you so much for having me.
Susan Freeman
Fantastic, Hannah. It’s so inspiring to hear how you just spotted a gap in the market and set out to fix it. We’ll watch your progress with great interest and I particularly look forward to hearing how the conversation goes with Honor Barratt.
So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon.
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