Building strong new communities is at the heart of what Pocket Living is all about – the developer specialises in creating affordable homes for first time buyers in the London boroughs where they live or work. At 20% below market price, the compact, carefully designed homes come with access to a wide range of shared spaces and amenities that help residents get to know their neighbours – an ambition that is perfectly supported by Spike Global’s resident engagement portal, Spike Living.
Leading resident engagement and property management software provider Spike Global creates white-labelled versions of its Spike Living portal for every client’s particular building or development – and Pocket Living has just signed up to put the portal into use at its latest housing development, Addiscombe Grove in East Croydon, which will be welcoming its first residents in the coming weeks.
Pocket Living has a successful track record of working with Spike on a number of previous developments across London, and is keen to roll out the software for future projects having seen how well residents engage with the portal. Across its developments more than 85% of residents have downloaded the app and are using the portal to make everyday living easier.
There are over 6,000 visits to the portal each month, and some of the most popular forums have accrued nearly a thousand posts and interactions, with the two most used groups being My Community-VR and Harbard Close Residents, which support people who live at Pocket Living’s Varcoe Road development in Southwark and Harbard Close in Barking.
Jeremy Heath-Smith, CEO of Spike Global, is delighted with the uptake among Pocket Living residents: “Across Pocket Living’s portfolio there have been extremely high uptakes of portal usage”.
Spike Living can be used in a wide range of ways – it’s invaluable for the everyday, practical things such as reporting a fault or arranging for a parcel to be collected, as well as for booking the communal spaces that Pocket Living is well known for, whether that’s a co-working desk or a fitness room.
“It can also do so much more,” says Jeremy. “The forums and social groups enable people to meet like-minded new friends who live in their development– the portal is only open to genuine residents, so it’s a safer and more localised alternative to conventional social media.”
“The portal also enables residents to get to know their surroundings by allowing local businesses, from restaurants to cleaners, to offer exclusive discounts to a development’s residents. All of this helps residents to feel more at home, more quickly. For the managers of a building it provides a straightforward way to engage with residents and make them feel valued, which will ultimately result in them staying there longer.”
Lorna Evans, Head of Customer Experience at Pocket Living, comments: “As Spike Living has already worked so successfully at many of our other sites it was the obvious choice for our latest development in East Croydon. At Addiscombe Grove we are promoting a real community feel with a landscaped communal roof terrace, Nordic garden and Hidden garden, each with fantastic views over south London and which are perfect for socialising and meeting neighbours. We also offer a wellness room, residents’ lounge, and co-working space, that can all be booked via the portal.”
“But beyond the practicalities, we also try to foster a spirit of togetherness among our residents, from giving them a welcoming drinks reception to helping them to set up a residents’ management committee to decide how their building should be run. The Spike Living software gives us another way of helping people to settle in.”
