“One of the successes that came out of King’s Cross was London is, by its definition, the sort of serendipity of people, cultures, communities and if you’re going to create new suburbs of London, you have to embrace that and that’s what makes London so special and so amazing and so it’s really important to us that we deliver that at Brent Cross Town.”
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 delighted to welcome Tom Goodall, Chief Executive Director of Related Argent. Tom joined the former Argent business in 2012 and became a Partner in 2020. Between 2019 and 2022, he was Head of Residential for the Related Argent business and CEO of the Heart of Hale development, overseeing a pipeline of more than 8000 new homes across London. In 2023, Tom became Chief Executive Director of Related Argent, leading the team of 175 property and urban regeneration professionals. Today the business he leads has a UK property portfolio of circa £13 billion, totalling in excess of 21 million square feet. Before joining the business, Tom worked project management and as a practicing architect on a number of large-scale mixed-use schemes, including the Shard and the London Olympics 2012 Athletes’ Village. Tom is a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and sits on its Housing Group. So now we are going to hear from Tom Goodall about his role at Related Argent, learnings from King’s Cross and how the new community at Brent Cross Town is unfolding. Tom, good morning and welcome.
Tom Goodall
Morning.
Susan Freeman
It was really good to meet you in New York in the summer on the Opportunity London study trip where we were hosted by Related at Hudson Yards and we’ll talk about that a little bit later, but let’s kick off just talking a little bit about you and your journey into real estate. I mean, did you always want to be a real estate developer or did it start off differently?
Tom Goodall
Sure, morning and thank you very much for having me, I’m delighted to be here. Did I always want to be a real estate developer? I mean I studied architecture through university and then kind of, through no other sort of better options at the time continued that through to chartership, I think I said to you when we met, I think I studied for eight years and practiced for six weeks in the end but I think I always knew that I wanted to move away from pure practicing architecture and the more I did that, the more I realised that I perhaps was only getting exposure to a small slither of the process and was very curious about, about the rest and I do think that, you know, generally whenever I’m interviewing people I’m always looking for that, that kind of curiosity and passion of more than just the direct skillset so, I don’t, I don’t think I ever really always passionately wanted to be a, you know a 3.22 property developer but I, but you know I do think I’ve always had a, an infinity and a passion for, for cities, I grew up in London and so you know I’ve seen that, our amazing city grow over, over decades and I you know certainly something that I’ve always had a passion for. That’s probably as close as I can get, I think.
Susan Freeman
No, I like, I like that, curiosity and passion. And then you went into project management I think and somehow worked on you know some of the like amazing projects that were going on at the time, I mean the Shard and Athletes’ Village, you can’t get much better than that.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I mean I think the probably the only thing I’m more passionate about than buildings and property and real estate, is sport, so I think when I had the opportunity to, to work on the Olympics, for anyone who was in London in 2012, what an amazing time that was and just sort of the, the energy and I was lucky enough to, to go to Paris last summer with my son, my eldest son, and you know actually you felt all that nostalgia again of a kind of a city that isn’t famous for being friendly most of the time and Paris you know being incredibly welcoming and vibrant and full of great vibes so, you know I really enjoyed that part of, of my career where I actually was combining my passions and it was a fascinating time really, we were trying to build three and a half, four thousand homes through a global financial crisis, all of them to the same spec, all being delivered by different means and methods because there just simply wasn’t the capacity to deliver to the same and so you know learnt and awful lot through that process and as you say, then moved on to, to through kind of the hotels route into working on the Shard with the Shangri-La Hotel there and you know all these things often you know, amazing insights into, into the city in which you grew up in so I think you know I was very fortunate for that.
Susan Freeman
Yes, the first time I saw the Athletes’ Village I really believed that there would be a legacy from the 2012 Olympics. Do you play sport? I mean obviously you’re interested in sport, is it from a spectator viewpoint or actually getting involved?
Tom Goodall
Well, I used to play a lot of sport. I now, as I get older, I, the body, I used to play a lot of hockey, the body doesn’t quite allow me to do that anymore but I actually met my wife through hockey but I play a fair amount but you know spectating and I think really in some ways there’s sort of a link there because my passion is very much about watching people do things that are very important to them and that’s why the Olympics is sort of the, the pinnacle of that, you know doesn’t matter what sport it is, I’d watch tiddlywinks if it was you know, if it meant a lot to the person doing it and actually you know the pinnacle of decades of training and commitment, I think that actually in some ways has a parallel to real estate and to actually seeing the passion that comes from the team that, that I lead in terms of what we’re trying to achieve in our projects often takes decades of commitment you know through various partners to achieve what we do and I think that that’s really, a really rewarding part of what we, we’re fortunate enough to do in our lives and it kind of definitely has parallels to that sporting analogy.
Susan Freeman
I hadn’t really thought about it like that, you’re absolutely right, I mean development is very much a team sport isn’t it.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I think more than that and not just a, you know your home team, if you take your home team being you know your business, you know it’s actually, it takes many different teams to create that working together and I think that’s what I love about it and what’s unique about it. And it’s what’s so special about it and I think once you know really in some ways the role of the developer is often that conductor or the orchestra, if you like, that really brings everyone together, really it doesn’t have many of the skills that are required to deliver on it but actually is important to bring everyone together but also create that, that vision and that passion and that dedication and push through when times are tough because there’s only one thing that’s certain is that things won’t go to plan, so.
Susan Freeman
That’s true and I think you know that vital role is something that people outside real estate just don’t understand, they might you know, know there’s a star architect for instance on the Shard, they’ll know that there’s a building contractor but they won’t necessarily understand that there is, you know, a very important element in all that that’s actually holding it together.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I don’t that matters really, you know, I’m not, I think any, at any point a developer becomes obsessed with getting recognition for anything they do, you know that’s a, a losing game, I think. You know the rewarding part of what we do is seeing the results, you know seeing the impact we have on, on the cities in which we work in, seeing the impacts we have on the people and we’re fortunate enough to have our head offices in King’s Cross and every day I get to walk through that estate that we worked on for over twenty years and see people enjoying it. I don’t expect those people to all come and pat us on the back but you know that’s part of the, part of the game, it’s just actually seeing the impact of what you do across the sort of social, economic, environmental impacts every day in the real world, that, that’s what really gives the reward to the teams that we work with.
Susan Freeman
Now, I agree, I mean the only, the only element is like trying to get young people from different backgrounds enthused about development and the different roles and they might not necessarily know that that is, you know that’s a career that they could go into so, you know getting that message out is quite difficult.
Tom Goodall
I mean I understand what you’re saying but I kind of go back to what I said at the beginning, I think that actually, curiosity and passion is kind of I think what makes the greatest developers and I think that that can come from all areas of, of the built environment, you know if you look at the sort of build up of our leadership team, we have very few surveyors and you know I think that’s sort of seen as traditional route, that’s not deliberate, it’s just kind of actually you know smart, curious people come from all walks of life and enter it so actually I don’t think it’s necessarily about a need to publish to the world that you can become a developer, I think it’s actually just a need to publish to the world the amazing kind of excitement involved in the, in the built environment and how many, you know I think one of the most, you know what I always said to any students I speak to, one of the best parts of the industry is that there a so many different careers that could be completely different day to day but still within the same sector and you could kind of transition from fairly seamlessly from one to the next so, and I see that as a real advantage, I think that the sort of freshness and the ability to do so many different facets of, of what is a giant team game as we said is the kind of really attractive thing and so, and I think inevitably some of the kind of curious minds will find their way into the development field but I don’t think it’s necessary to publish and publicise this idea of being the developer because I think in some ways that would risk belittling the hundreds of other components of that team that are the critical parts that make it tick.
Susan Freeman
I agree with you there and I mean it’s interesting I know we’ve discussed this, that I think Argent probably has more people with an architectural background than other developers so it’s obviously a positive thing. So, just talking a little bit about you know the evolution of your role, I think you joined Argent in 2012 and then you progressed to be Head of Residential and then 2023, you were appointed Chief Executive of the combined Related Argent business so, it would be interesting to know about how the businesses came together because I think Argent and Related have been working together for you know some years now.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I mean, astonishingly it was, it’s coming up to ten years actually since the businesses first connected and if you cast your mind back to sort of 2015, we were two-thirds of the way through King’s Cross and were starting to consider what next because these projects take a huge amount of energy and effort and focus and commitment and there’s only a certain amount of capacity that you have to do great things and I think at the same time Related had arrived in London and were exploring avenues of how they could get involved in the London real estate market. Two very different businesses in some regards but also remarkably similar in many others. Privately owned, small dynamic leadership teams, a real passion for place, people, mixed-use, residential, commercial offices, but all through education, public realm and everything in-between, affordable housing being a big component of the Related business and I think through King’s Cross and Hudson Yards, arguably two of the kind largest and most successful urban regeneration schemes in the western world over the last few decades so, you know those things combined kind of were a great foundation for the two businesses to come together and very quickly we, we won our first project, being Brent Cross Town, which we’ve now been working on for eight years and we completed our first building a few weeks ago and are currently under construction with about 1500 homes there and you know these things take time and they take partnership and they do, one of the successes of King’s Cross I think, I’m often asked the question “Why was King’s Cross so successful?” and of course if the answer was even possible in an hour podcast then you could probably make a lot of money out just that answer but it’s a combination of factors, uniqueness of situation, time, you know a moment in time but also I think fundamentally the fact that the King’s Cross estate stayed in single ownership as a partnership for the first fifteen years of that process and that allowed such a stable base and committed, committed stakeholders to deliver on the vision and that’s something that we have with Related Argent which we’re you know very proud of and that kind of committed base of stakeholders with a vision to follow through is actually something that, that isn’t as common as you might think.
Susan Freeman
So, what is the size of the combined business?
Tom Goodall
Related itself is the largest privately owned real estate developer in North America, a huge, huge business, I mean if we just look at the size of the Related Argent business in London, which I probably think is a better way to answer the question, so we have a development pipeline in excess of 20 million square feet, combined value of over 13 billion if you look at everything that we own, operate and manage, we’re a developer owner-operator and we truly sit across the whole development spectrum across all use classes.
Susan Freeman
So, that’s quite sizeable and one of the things that we’ve talked about is the increased focus on the build to rent portfolio and I think your first build to rent development is the Author development in King’s Cross which I think is now you know up and running, I mean what is your vision for the, for the build to rent portfolio? What sort of size are you, are you aiming for and are you going to be operating it yourselves?
Tom Goodall
Yeah, so, I think one of the things when you, when you work on these big projects and it isn’t the only thing we do, you know we work on smaller, but we’re best known for our kind of mega projects if you, but I think one of the things that you learn is that control is really important, as I said control over, of stakeholders but also control of the ground floor experience, control of the public realm and ultimately control of the buildings in terms of how they’re maintained, how they’re managed because that everything combined, you know all the sum of those parts create the, how the place is going to feel and I think one of the things we always focus on whenever we start a project is, is not what’s the building going to look like, not even really what’s going to be in it, it’s actually just what do we want this place to feel? What do we want people to feel when they arrive somewhere? That, that is the overriding starting point of any development and that starts to set a kind of place purpose if you like for every development we work on which, which we try and stay true to as the colours of the façade change and the form of the buildings change and the use classes change, you know, ultimately that, that place purpose is something we try and hold true to. And that, that kind of was the, the seed of the, of the forming the BTR pipeline and operation platform, so we now have our own operation platform in-house. We currently, as you say, have one building, one asset under management which is 250 homes, just under, and we have about 1500 under construction, we expect to be around 3000 homes under management of that BTR platform by the end of the decade and try to keep building from that point onwards. But it’s, it’s not being done just purely because we want to have a build to rent platform, we think there’s a huge potential in that sector but I also think it just allows us to take control of another set of asset class and the same when we do the commercial offices where we, we own, operate and manage those buildings to ensure that we can continue to create amazing places and curate amazing places and I think in some ways, I don’t want to overplay this analogy but someone has asked me this before and I’ve likened it to a theatre and you know I think the people, people go to the theatre to watch the show and I think of course if the theatre is badly designed, the acoustics are not good and the view’s not great, the seats are not comfortable, then that doesn’t create a great experience but they don’t just sit in the seats and look and think oh that’s a fantastic empty stage there, let me just stare at that for a while, you know they come for the show and I think what we’ve been great at over the years and what we’ve focussed on is putting on a good show but you need control of the assets to do that, you need to be able to refurbish the theatre, you need to be able to upgrade the theatre, improve the lighting or the sound, you know to kill the analogy totally, but having control of those assets allows us to manage the value and the value is in the show and that is what people feel and experience every time they turn up at our developments and that’s, that’s what we think feel drives the value.
Susan Freeman
And initially, the first phases of, of King’s Cross when you built residential, you sold the flats, is that how it worked?
Tom Goodall
Yeah, so the initial phase is 90% of the residential are market facing residential at King’s Cross was sold market sale, which you know served the development well and you know was very successful and we now have, I think we’ve sold out of all but one building now at King’s Cross, we have less than ten apartments available for sale on the estate and I think you know a testament to the success of the place that we’ve created in terms of the demand of, of people who want to live there, you need to create places that people want to live and I think that’s, that’s always the conundrum when people are talking about a housing crisis and how, how quickly we deliver homes. Ultimately, the focus has to be on can you create places that people want to be? And if people want to be somewhere then you’ll be able to sell more homes and deliver more homes because you ultimately have to deliver to a demand and so I think that’s, you know, across a rental, across a sale that, that’s a truism across all use classes and so I think that’s a really important part of it.
Susan Freeman
And there’s certainly, you know, at King’s Cross there is, you know there’s a real vibe and I mean it’s difficult to imagine that there really wasn’t anything there before, it’s now, you know, everything’s happening.
Tom Goodall
That is actually one of the, the challenges that we sort of face now in some way, you know I think, I was looking at it the other day, probably about 80% of our staff, maybe slightly more, were not in the business when King’s Cross was not a no-brainer and you know and if you say that point was twelve, thirteen years ago, you know a point where people were kind of questioning whether it could work, whether it was central enough, whether you could convince people to divert their route north from the station as opposed to heading south into the city and of course the challenge there is very much the challenge that gets faced on every, every new project we take on and actually you know reminding our team and the partners we work with that there was a point when everyone said that King’s Cross was going to fail, King’s Cross was famously said to be not central enough to succeed.
Susan Freeman
It’s difficult to remember that isn’t it.
Tom Goodall
Yeah.
Susan Freeman
So, just going back to sort of Related and the residential focus, I think, I mean Related you’ve mentioned you know how large they are in the United States and I think they have over 71,000 homes that they, they operate?
Tom Goodall
It’s hard to keep up, it’s definitely over 75,000, I think.
Susan Freeman
Is it? Okay, so it’s gone up. And I was really impressed, I mean I mentioned that we were in New York on the Opportunity London tour and we went to Hudson Yards and saw what Related had built there and you know it was just so impressive so it must be, it must be quite sort of helpful to have the relationship with a company that has been doing this for years and being doing it so well.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think the, and that probably most obviously manifests itself in the build to rent platform. Related have been doing what they call ‘luxury rentals’ in Manhattan for over thirty years, they have 25,000 or so portfolio of homes just in that city itself and for us to be able to build an operational platform from scratch, launch our first building, that building is now rated on Home Views as Number 1 out of over 630 buildings in the Greater London area for customer reviews and we wouldn’t have been able to do that without the experience of what Related have learned over a thirty year period, so that’s been invaluable to us and of course the same goes the other way, you know I think that there’s a lot of lessons that we’ve learned in the development of King’s Cross that have helped inform some of the work they’ve been doing not only in New York but also in California, in Boston, Chicago and other places so, it’s certainly a very valuable, mutual relationship.
Susan Freeman
So, you know we talked a little bit about the success of King’s Cross and you know it is always being mentioned as the exemplar when people want to talk about you know successful mixed-used development. How do you take those learnings across to Brent Cross Town, which is obviously further out of London, it’s almost like a blank sheet of paper? How does that sort of convert if you like or are you building something completely different?
Tom Goodall
It’s a great question and as you might imagine, one that we’re, one that we ask ourselves and are asked to us often and it is quite a sort of complex, layered answer I think so, maybe I’ll take some time to go through that but if it fundamentally, if you just peel back the difference to where the business is when it started King’s Cross and to where it’s, when it is when it starts Brent Cross Town, obviously when we started King’s Cross we had worked in some larger mixed-use schemes but not in London and a lot of that vision was driven by the vision of the place, CGIs and kind of you know images of what it could look like and as I said you know there was a famous interview with the CEO at the time, Roger Madelin, where it was put to him that King’s Cross was not close enough to Central London to succeed and he responded that he didn’t, he said “In twenty years’ time the question is whether the City of London will be close enough to King’s Cross to succeed” and you know, I, whilst obviously tongue in cheek, it’s not a million miles from, from if you look at what businesses are now looking for in terms of the vibrant mixed-use, human-led cities that they’re wanting to locate themselves in, in suburbs. We now start Brent Cross Town, we started eight years ago and said we have the track record of delivering on King’s Cross and the first thing to say is that Brent Cross Town is not going to be the next King’s Cross, it is going to be the new Brent Cross and that doesn’t mean that we’re not extremely proud of what we’ve done in King’s Cross and look to take a lot of lessons we’ve learned from there to ensure success, but it does mean that we must remember that every place has its own identity and its own magnetism that, that we must focus in on. Having said that, as I said before, the kind of concept of build the theatre but then put on a damn good show, is absolutely at the heart of everything we’re doing. We opened our first part of Brent Cross Town three years ago now and this summer we’ll be running our third summer of the summer events programme. Thousands and thousands of people turn up to those events and whenever we look at a development site, you know I think it’s very easy and I think it’s sometimes a little bit lazy for people to talk about “this is a great development site, it is only 8 minutes from there to here”, you know 8 minutes, 12 minutes from Brent Cross Town to King’s Cross. We think of it the other way around so we think about it is actually only 12 minutes from King’s Cross to Brent Cross Town because if you’re really going to create places that thrive and communities that flourish and you want to attract inward investment in the same way that you know the global city does into that place and so it’s important to think of those transport links the other way round I think and create places that people want to visit, live in, work in, play in and spend time in, so I think that’s really important. Some of the sort of more specific lessons you know I think are how do you create a thriving place that is still a giant construction site? So, you know probably people were, would say they were coming for dinner at King’s Cross 2012, twelve, thirteen years ago and you know there was enough going on at ground floor, enough vibrancy and enough control of where they were and were not allowed to go that I don’t think they felt like they were in the middle of a construction site they were spending over a million pound a calendar day on construction and did for almost a decade. That’s the same challenge that we have at Brent Cross, how do you programme and phase a scheme that allows you to create, finish parts of the city while still obviously developing it at some pace. And then the final bit is how do you kind of create place champions, you know you wouldn’t really have found King’s Cross advertised in the evening papers “Buy here” type adverts, it was all done through that putting on a good show, event programme and word of mouth and it was so much more authentic and so much more genuine to have our own cheerleaders and I think it’s the thing that to this day still amazes me about King’s Cross, its sort of power and magnetism, its power of creating cheerleaders out of people that visit and I love the experience when I walk from the station up to the office and you happen to walk behind someone giving their mum or their aunt or their friend of their sister, brother or someone they’ve just met a kind of guided tour of the place that you’ve created and the facts are always, almost always incorrect but that doesn’t matter, it’s the passion and the kind of enthusiasm for the place that is infectious and I think once you create that, that’s the kind of real magic of what cities can do to people.
Susan Freeman
You know just to discuss what you’ve got at Brent Cross Town, I mean you’ve put in a new station which obviously helps with the communication tremendously, you’ve got, it’s actually, I mean in acreage it’s larger than King’s Cross, I think.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, correct, so, so Barnet Council built the new Brent Cross West Station which opened in December ’23 and that was a kind of commitment from them that enabled us to commit to the, to the development, so the, it’s 180 acres which is about almost three times the size of that area of King’s Cross, about 60 acres of those is open green space which is, it’s a very unique offering, you know being able to find somewhere with so much green space that we are developing into, not in a sort of building on sense but you know redeveloping those green spaces into play spaces with parks and trees and playgrounds and sporting activities, cafes etc and making them more useable and the scheme itself is master development joint venture between ourselves and Barnet Council and that master developer is responsible for land assembly, infrastructure, public realm, place and then Related Argent builds the vertical buildings from that and yeah, in total the whole scheme will deliver around 6700 homes, about 3 million square foot of commercial space, three new schools, parks, open, you know playgrounds, social infrastructure etc, etc.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, it’s impressive, I mean I, I’ve been there, I’ve seen the park, I’ve seen the lake, it is lovely to see all the like local children just coming in to have their picnics round you know in the park. I mean, one of the things you know about King’s Cross is the number of heritage buildings and I mean one of the things I wonder, is it more difficult to create like a vibrancy sense of place where you’re starting from scratch where you don’t have those buildings?
Tom Goodall
I’d say I don’t agree that you’re starting from scratch, I think that as I said the 60 acres of open space that Brent Cross Town has at its disposal within the kind of it’s red line boundary, is a totally unique feature and being able to kind of create that outdoor, wellness, living experience was something that we were keen on exploring far before Covid and clearly since Covid when people are spending more time at home and less time commuting, then that actually is more important. Everyone remembers how important it was during those Covid years to what really happens around their where they live, you know what is the quality of the local bakery, the local amenities, where you can do exercise, what kind of sports clubs are there and so I think from the very start our pledge was to create the place in London were sport and play was at the heart of the town and that’s, that sort of participatory rather than, there are plenty of places in London to watch elite sports but really the quality of grassroot participatory facilities is very mixed and I think there’s a real opportunity there and actually, you know you mentioned when we visited, kids from the existing communities because there’s no new communities at that point, as I said we only just recently completed our first build, our residential buildings, enjoying the space we created and I think that’s, that’s part of the pledge as well in terms of creating a place where all can flourish and we’ve, alongside Manchester University, we’ve created a thing called the ‘Flourishing Index’ which is an independently run assessment tool basically that, that assesses how the health and vitality of the local community, both new and existing, and we run that, we’ve been running that since 2016 and I think one of the things that we realised at King’s Cross is that as soon as we started to really understand the scale of the social, environmental and economic impact we were having with the development, we’d missed the point of being able to really take the baseline data, so we wanted for this development to really start from scratch at that point and part of that is understanding that development can be disruptive. Development, you know, it isn’t a linear line of improvement for the local communities and I think it’s really important to be open and honest about that and that’s why it’s important to us to get ahead with delivering public realm, to get ahead with delivering new park spaces, new retail units, new community café, Gussy’s Ice Cream Parlour in the park which sold about 2000 ice-creams in its first weekend, you know I think all these things are, are improvements to the local community before anything else comes and I think acknowledging that there are, that’s it’s not a linear path as I said or improvement and I think that’s important and so it’s great to see people embracing that and sort of becoming champions of what we’re trying to create.
Susan Freeman
I love the idea of the ‘Flourish Index’ and I think it’s a really great idea. In terms of the housing that you are planning for Brent Cross Town, I mean what percentage of affordable are you aiming for?
Tom Goodall
I don’t think it’s about actually what you’re aiming for, I think it's what you can deliver. I think every, every developer actually would like to deliver more affordable housing, you know just on a really basic level, it’s where the need is, it’s where the demand is and actually or clearly it flies off the shelves because it’s so in demand and I think clearly at the scale that we’re delivering at, it also is the indicator of a healthy, diverse, mixed community. Having said that, when you’re building on the scale of a new town that we’re building on where there’s 650 million worth of infrastructure that has to be delivered alongside the new net, carbon energy networks, as I said three schools, roads, park land, it’s not just about affordable housing, you have to actually create places and neighbourhoods people want to be as well so that clearly is social infrastructure that if it wasn’t needed could be going straight into affordable housing so there is a balance here, on the scale that we’re delivering at you have to deliver all parts of the social infrastructure requirements, not just the housing need. The planning permissions are old, we inherited it from, it actually pre-dates King’s Cross from the early 2000’s and that has a minimum of 15% affordable housing per phase and that’s viability tested at every phase. In the first phase, we’re actually delivering about that viability threshold, we’re actually delivering at 20% in the first phase, as I said alongside hundreds of millions of pounds worth of infrastructure which has already gone in.
Susan Freeman
No, it’s incredible to see the, you know if you drive along the North Circular, you see the buildings, they seem to sort of be sort of going on you know on a daily basis.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, exactly and I think when you create a new town, you can’t just do one building and call yourself a town, I think that’ you know that’s really important. In the same way we did at King’s Cross, the first building we opened was social housing and those residents moved in, starting just before Christmas and you know I think that’s really important as a marker to what we’re trying to create, acknowledging that there is market facing housing required as well in order to pay for some of the social infrastructure and create a diverse town but in the first buildings we’re delivering social housing, market sale, market rental, intermediate discount market rented, co-living, later living, a real diverse, student housing, a real diverse mix because I think one of the successes that came out of King’s Cross was London is by its definition the sort of serendipity of people, cultures, communities and if you’re going to create new suburbs of London, you have to embrace that and that’s what makes London so special and so amazing and so it’s really important to us that we deliver that at Brent Cross Town.
Susan Freeman
And obviously Brent Cross has been, I’m sure it won’t be in the future, it has been better known for the shopping centre which is on the other side of the North Circular. What needs to happen for there to be a sort of better access to the shopping centre from Brent Cross Town?
Tom Goodall
Well the first part of your question is about perception change and this isn’t a new concept to us so, being best known for a shopping centre when you, when your previous project was King’s Cross is a pretty good place to be, if you remember what King’s Cross used to be known for before we were working there so, you know I think actually, this idea of perception change, the shopping centre has a very positive affinity with a lot of the local community and is a great amenity so that for us is a very positive starting point as opposed to what we were dealing with at King’s Cross in the, in the early 2000s.
Susan Freeman
Red Light District, for those that don’t remember.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I mean we had to, any meeting that finished you know even into the late sort of Noughties, any meeting that finished after dark, we had to escort female members of the team to the station and you think that was only fifteen years ago, seventeen years ago, and so I think it’s easy to forget that and so I think yes, in connection to that to the reason why people previously had gone to Brent Cross is really important and that’s both physical and kind of metaphorical and kind of working with your assets and I think you know, in the same way that people in the shopping centre will want to come across to Brent Cross Town to experience the open green spaces and the restaurants and the outdoor living and the parks, I’m sure the residents of Brent Cross Town will want to do the same for the, vice versa for the shopping experience.
Susan Freeman
So, are there any plans to sort of create the sort of bridge across?
Tom Goodall
Er yeah, sorry, so there’s a bridge, in the masterplan there’s a new bridge between the two projects.
Susan Freeman
That would be brilliant because I think, as you say, one wants the movement between. And what is the timing to complete Brent Cross Town because I was reading that Milton Keynes was 25 years in the making so obviously creating a new community with all the infrastructure that you’ve mentioned takes a lot of time.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, and the first letter we ever sent on King’s Cross was 2001 and you know we’re just about to start the final building of development there in 2025 so, these things take a long time, as I said I think actually the key to it is, is I don’t think any, you know, everyone will have their own view but I suspect that most members of the general public would have viewed King’s Cross as being “finished” in inverted commas, as in it was a place that they went to and didn’t feel they were in the middle of a construction site probably for a least the last ten years so I think it’s less about how long something takes to get there but how quickly you can get to a coherent set of buildings and spaces and, that creates somewhere that people want to be and ultimately people will vote with their feet and that’s the great thing about real estate, you get a fairly instant, instant feedback loop from if you’re doing a good job, so I think that that’s something that we, we really embrace and that challenge to create both the spaces which we’ve already started doing and then the kind of events to draw the people there is part of what we do.
Susan Freeman
And just sort of moving on slightly, the Government has set out a target in its manifesto for one and a half million new homes over the next Parliament, which is obviously, I think it’s about 300,000 a year. Do you have any thoughts on whether that’s, that’s possible, what needs to happen to enable that because these things take time as we, as we’ve discussed and a lot of moving parts have to come together to increase the output that we have at the moment.
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I mean look, I think we all understand why politicians would want to target a certain quantum within a Parliament, I suspect preferably you know six, nine months before the end of that Parliament to allow for campaigns, you know, and that, that’s fair enough, we all understand that but I think the most important thing, it’s important to have an ambitious target because it’s important for people to understand the scale of the problem. I think it’s also important for people to understand that that target doesn’t stop when a political cycle ends and I think one of the most challenging things that’s happened certainly in terms of housing delivery is the lack of consistency of policy over a period of time that you know changes every, every Parliament and I think seventeen or so housing ministers in the last five years or whatever the right stat is but it’s a lot over a short period of time, would speak to that as well and I think housing, our housing needs, housing is social infrastructure, it needs to be regarded as that and I think one of the things that we’re very supportive of the Government doing is actually treating it as such and setting an ambitious target and being steadfast from the start of their Parliament about that and maintaining every indication that they’ll maintain that through and I think that’s a really important step change from, from where we’ve been previously and I think that you know whether you actually meet a target, I’m sure plenty from both sides of the, of the divide will pick up on that number but actually for us what’s important is that we start to improve delivery statistics, the delivery statistics are not good, London delivery has fallen somewhere between 75-85% in the last twelve, eighteen months, as all of the pressures on cost and delivery and the consumer’s ultimate ability to afford housing has, has diminished as really constrained supply and I think that’s a very serious challenge that both the City of London faces and the country as a whole, but I would say you know having said all that, I do think that there needs to be, having a target is one thing, very good first step, we’re looking forward to the publication of the policies that will support that and I will say that we have found the new Government to be very engaging with the private sector in terms of determining how we’re going to deliver on that, on that target.
Susan Freeman
That’s positive because I think something needs to happen, we seem to have been talking a housing crisis for probably more than ten years now and you know…
Tom Goodall
Yeah, I mean I said tongue in cheek a few years ago, I don’t think it’s necessarily tongue in cheek anymore that there was a point at climate activists stopped calling it a climate crisis and called it a climate emergency, I think we should be declaring it a housing emergency, I think that there is a clear crisis in the housing sector but more alarmingly, the figures are getting rapidly worse because ultimately the housing delivery is outsourced to private sector and the kind of combination of regulation requirements, all of which are good things, on the sector and the cost to deliver versus the ability as I said of customers to afford means that there simply isn’t enough returns in housing delivering often to generate delivery and I think you know one of the things we’re fortunate enough to do is work on long term projects at such a scale that we kind of create our own, our own value in many senses and also kind of you know if you’re working on 20-25 year project there’s only one thing you know for certain and that’s you’re going to have a few economic cycles to work through, you know actually if you’re not working on that scale and you’re working on one-off projects, it’s hard to justify I suspect at the present.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, so, it will be interesting to see what, what happens. And in terms of you know what you’re looking at going forward, obviously you’ve got quite a lot to do with your existing projects but are you thinking about you know the next Brent Cross Town, King’s Cross is going to be?
Tom Goodall
Yes, I mean I, we’re opportunity driven so we’re always kind of you know interested and out there and having conversations, you know, excited about the prospects of I mean, whilst the risk, reward equations are challenging at some point you know what’s always and ever constant is London as a vibrant, attractive, stable place to invest and develop and I think London is always resilient and always surprising in how quickly it can weather storms and I think that that’s a really strong asset that the country has in terms of attracting inward investment and which will continue and I think you know on the scale that we deliver at, we are actually able to weather the storms of construction costs, inflation etc better than some others because we deliver on such scale so, and you know I think us and some of the larger housebuilders actually are able to keep delivering through, through the uncertain times but I think that, so that is a really kind of critical part of the equation you know and we mustn’t forget the value that London and its kind of unique cultural melting point brings to, to investors and you know it’s seen as a very stable and attractive place to invest.
Susan Freeman
So will you be looking, will you be continuing to focus on London or looking outside London?
Tom Goodall
Well, no, we historically have worked a lot in Manchester and Birmingham, we’re very much an urban, you know we’re passionate urbanists so I think you know we’re very, very focussed on urban, urban development but I think you know the definition of London has probably grown, you know these days it’s very reasonable to commute you know an hour and a half rather than an hour to somewhere for, if you’re working a flexible working, if you’re in a flexible sort of hybrid working position and so that brings in places, you know lots of other sort of exciting cities that I think are going to benefit from that, have already benefited from that so, no, we’re not, absolutely not exclusively London currently, that’s where our projects are based but we’ve looked outside as well.
Susan Freeman
You could be taking the King’s Cross magic further afield.
Tom Goodall
The Brent Cross magic.
Susan Freeman
And the Brent Cross magic, yes, but it’s obviously, it has to have a cross in it.
Tom Goodall
Yeah. And be 12 minutes from you know Central London helps, but yeah.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, that’s true. So, are there any key urban trends that you think we will be seeing saying you know we’re looking ten years, I mean ten years is probably a little bit too far to look but since you know you are creating these new places, are you seeing any changes in the way people want to live and work and spend their time?
Tom Goodall
That’s a really good question. I think that sort of post-Covid, there has, now we have started to see the seeds of re-urbanisation in a way, you know I think people moved out of the cities during that kind of strange 24 month period but actually, I think people are starting to understand the negative impacts of not being in the sort of thriving, bustling centres and you know the risk of isolation, loneliness etc particularly in older generations, I think it’s a really key kind of trend and so I think we’re, we’re definitely seeing in our places that demographic, it absolutely is not the kind of stereotype urban, young professional model. Clearly, the big challenge that cities have is can they keep and maintain to an affordability point, families? I think that’s a really big challenge for London in particular, where can we deliver places and housing that allows families to, to stay in the city as opposed to you know afford to stay there and then through as they grow through their careers and into retirement and I think that’s a really important part and I think that’s where places like Brent Cross Town you know really can solve some of these problems, you know we, we’re building family housing, we have on your doorstep 60 acres of green open space and you know so actually maybe you don’t need your own private garden if you have that on your doorstep and you have some of the best playgrounds in North London that are there already so, you know I think there’s and actually trying to reimagine how families live in urban centres and the benefits that they get from doing so, so I think that’s a really important challenge that we all face together.
Susan Freeman
I mean it’s unusual to have that extensive you know green space, I mean it, it is and obviously you’ve planted you know the park so well and also with the proximity of the station, I suppose people don’t have to have cars, you know they can rely on public transport.
Tom Goodall
Well, I mean, I mean we have swathes of empty car parks at King’s Cross you know for that, for that reason and I think you know that is obviously Brent Cross is a little further out but that, that train, I mean it’s half an hour to drive, it’s, it’s 12 minutes on the train, you know which goes every, every 8 minutes or so. And so, you know actually, increasingly car ownership in London is declining, that’s a good thing I think, most people would see that as a good thing, you know clearly as with families that starts to, you know obviously one of the other attractive things about Brent Cross Town is it’s situated right at the bottom of the, on the North Circular, right at the bottom of the M1, so you’ve got really good, easy access out of London and so I think you know we, we’ve been exploring carpooling and other ideas of how you can relieve the burden of car ownership but actually provide access to it as well.
Susan Freeman
That’s a good idea. So, thank you very much, it’s been great talking to you.
Tom Goodall
You’re very welcome, I’ve really enjoyed it, thank you.
Susan Freeman
Thank you, Tom, for some great insights into what has contributed to the success of King’s Cross, your new focus on residential build to rent and the coming to life of the vision for Brent Cross Town, I for one will be following its progress with great interest.
So that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very shortly.
The PropertyShe podcast is brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum and can be found at mishcon.com/PropertyShe along with all our interviews and programme notes. The podcasts are also available to subscribe to on your Apple podcast app and on Spotify and whichever podcast platform you use. Do continue to subscribe and let us have your feedback and comments and most importantly, suggestions for future guests and of course you can continue to follow me on LinkedIn and on Twitter @Propertyshe for a very regular commentary on all things real estate, Prop Tech and the built environment. See you soon.