Author: Jonny Wootten

Placemaking has transformed from a mere buzzword to an indispensable strategy for creating thriving and sustainable communities. In a dynamic landscape where supply and demand continually shape the real estate sector, it’s more than constructing buildings; it’s about creating environments that foster a sense of belonging, identity, and community. “We shape buildings”, Winston Churchill once argued, “and then, they shape us”.

The Significance of Placemaking

All too often placemaking is viewed as a luxury, something nice but not essential to a development’s success. Recent praise from Housing Secretary Michael Gove regarding a new checklist that rates the placemaking quality of developments underlines the growing importance of this concept. The reality is, placemaking can generate a big return on investment. 

A well-designed, community-focused development makes it more likely that potential residents will not only choose a development over others but also remain living there. According to a survey conducted by the National Multifamily Housing Council, communities with strong placemaking initiatives saw a 7% increase in resident retention rates. 

Furthermore, developments with thriving communal spaces, and a strong sense of identity tend to increase in value more rapidly than those lacking these elements. As property values increase, both investors and residents can benefit. The Urban Land Institute reported that residential properties located within walking distance of well-designed public spaces and amenities can command up to 20% higher rental and sales prices. 

How Resident Portals Facilitate Placemaking

In the digital age, technology has emerged as a powerful tool to facilitate placemaking. Here’s how resident portals play a pivotal role in creating vibrant communities. 

Fostering Community Connection

Placemaking often involves community events and gatherings. Resident portals can help in organising and promoting these events, making it easier for residents to participate. Developments that have implemented resident engagement portals have reported a 20% increase in resident participation in community events and initiatives.

Resident portals also provide residents with a central place to connect with their neighbours, share experiences, and organise events or activities. This digital community-building enhances the sense of belonging, encouraging residents to become active participants in shaping their communities. 

What’s more, latest ONS data has revealed that those aged between 16-29 are over twice as likely to report feeling lonely often or always than those over 70.  Having solutions like Spike Living in place allows residents to easily connect and find others in their local community that share similar interests and hobbies. 

Resident portals also serve as a virtual town square, allowing residents to voice their opinions and preferences regarding local initiatives. This can make communication between residents, property management, and local authorities much more transparent, helping to build trust and ensuring that residents are informed about ongoing placemaking projects. 

Simplifying Communication

Effective communication is crucial in maintaining a thriving community. Resident portals make it easier for residents to report issues, request maintenance, and receive updates on community news, as well as be kept informed about safety policies and important information, creating a more responsive living experience.

Research by Zego found that developments that use resident engagement portals experience a 30% reduction in response times for maintenance requests, leading to higher resident satisfaction. 

Spike Living acts as a central communication hub, boasting a multitude of ways to enhance communication in developments, whether it’s messaging between staff and residents, or serving as an exclusive and safe form of social media, with residents getting to know their neighbours through a mobile app. 

Access to Amenities and Services

Through resident portals, residents can access information about local amenities and services. This information empowers residents to explore and make the most of their community. Developments that have resident portals in place have reported a 25% increase in amenity utilisation, leading to higher resident satisfaction.
 
Spike Living serves as a gateway to a range of amenities and services within the community. Residents can easily book facilities, find local businesses, and access exclusive offers, all from the palm of their hands, enhancing their overall living experience. 

Achieve ESG and Sustainability Goals

Sustainability is a key aspect of modern placemaking. Recent research into what modern renters and homeowners want from their living environment found that 80% of respondents said it was important that their home has sustainability credentials when considering a new place to live.

Resident portals like Spike Living can connect residents with other like-minded neighbours via various online clubs and forums. Creating a place where residents can share their own useful tips, and organise their own community events such as neighbourhood clean-ups or volunteer days, helps to instil a sense of togetherness and collective focus.  

Research by Spike, ASK4 and Utopi found that investing in developing a community not only enhances the resident experience – it can also lead to better outcomes. Residents are more likely to behave in a way that benefits the collective good if they feel an attachment to the people, place, and community in which they live, something that resident portals can help with.

Summary

Placemaking is a dynamic process that goes beyond traditional urban planning. It involves the active participation of residents, a commitment to cultural identity, and a focus on creating safe, sustainable, and inviting spaces. Resident portals such as Spike Living serve as a valuable tool in this process, enabling community engagement, transparency, and information sharing. As the real estate industry continues to evolve, those who prioritise placemaking and invest in their communities will undoubtedly come out ahead. 

Given both the current housing crisis and tough economic climate, as well as the shift towards more sustainable practices, the real estate sector now more than ever needs solutions to meet this challenging environment. What’s more, buildings with better sustainability credentials are achieving markedly higher capital values and rents according to recent research by JLL.

Here’s how Spike Living, Spike’s award-winning tenant portal, can help investors, developers, operators, and property managers alike reduce operational costs, exceed ESG obligations and enhance the tenant experience.

Reduce Operational Costs and Enhance Operational Efficiency

Streamline Maintenance Reporting

One of the most time-consuming parts of a property manager’s job is the handling of maintenance issues, with minor issues turning into major ones if they aren’t dealt with quickly and efficiently. 

Spike Living speeds up communication in these instances and allows tenants to quickly provide your staff with a clear idea of the task ahead. Tenants are even able to attach photos of the issue giving your maintenance staff the opportunity to diagnose the fault ahead of time and increasing the likelihood of fixing the issue on their first visit.

Automate the Booking Process

With onsite amenity spaces becoming the new norm in developments, having an easy way for tenants to book and interact with these spaces without requiring staff interaction increases the probability of them being used.

By enabling tenants to book a meeting room, gym slot, cinema space or sign up for a class or event via the Spike Living tenant app, this turns what could be an archaic process into a seamless experience, encouraging tenants to spend more time enjoying the spaces and freeing up staff.

Securely Manage Documentation

Important documentation like signed contracts, health and safety policies, welcome packs and instruction manuals can be stored digitally and securely within Spike Living.

This makes contracts and vital information easily accessible, with notifications able to be sent to tenants whenever there are newer versions needing to be reviewed and acknowledged, allowing for full traceability.

Simplify Parcel Management

Having an easy and efficient way to manage deliveries is becoming increasingly important as global online retail sales are expected to reach £515 trillion by 2023, with the growing volume of packages now being delivered to homes.

By using Spike Living, staff scan packages as they arrive which will then send a notification to the relevant tenant informing them that a package is ready to be collected. This saves staff from having to manually message tenants individually, reducing parcel processing time by up to 75%.  

Drive Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

Energy Monitoring

Spike has partnered with Utopi to enable tenants to view their own energy usage and track their progress towards reducing their consumption in the Spike Living portal. Examples include the amount of energy used compared with others living in a similar-sized apartment, the amount of carbon used, or how much energy is saved by turning the heating down by one click.

This transparency encourages tenants to adopt more sustainable behaviours, with research showing that this can reduce carbon emissions by up to 35%.

Investors, developers, and operators are also able to use this data to set targets for reduction in consumption and spot outliers and poor-performing tenants, allowing managers to offer advice and support, as well as highlight potential maintenance issues.

ESG Reporting

Spike Living not only provides tenants with a centralised platform to access information about their building and communicate with management but also provides an opportunity for operators to report on their own impact and the initiatives they are undertaking, such as switching to environmentally friendly cleaning products, replacing communal lights to use energy-efficient light bulbs, as well as openly responding to feedback from tenants.

Spike Living enables staff to share and promote information about local recycling programs, green transportation options, and energy-saving tips directly with tenants. By providing easy access to this information, tenants become more informed and inspired to act.

Create Positive Social Impact and Community Building

Community Engagement

Spike Living allows operators and property managers to promote in-house and local events, as well as encourage tenants to get to know one another over via online clubs and forums, all helping to foster a sense of community among tenants. This can lead to better relationships, improved tenant satisfaction, and importantly promotes tenancy renewals reducing voids and saving operators turnover costs.

What’s more many of Spike’s clients team up with local businesses to offer exclusive discounts to their tenants on anything from cleaning services and dog walkers to local bars and restaurants. All of these added-value services can be promoted and driven through Spike Living.

Partner with Spike

By embracing technology solutions like Spike Living investors and operators can reduce operational costs by empowering staff to be more efficient, whilst at the same time enhancing the tenant experience by providing greater transparency and ease of access to information and amenities, helping to create thriving communities.

Book a demo today to learn how Spike Living can reduce your operating costs and exceed ESG obligations.

Spike has been named as one of The Sunday Times Best Places to Work in 2023. The prestigious award, voted by staff, recognises organisations with the highest employee engagement and wellbeing levels.

Based in Bournemouth and employing 32 staff, the company was recognised in the small organisation category for companies with 10-47 employees, achieving an overall engagement score of 87%, 11% higher than the industry average. Spike also scored highly across the key categories for employee engagement and workplace happiness including reward and recognition, instilling pride, sharing information, employee wellbeing, and job satisfaction.

Commenting on the award Jeremy Heath-Smith, CEO of Spike, said: “I am extremely proud that Spike has been recognised as a Sunday Times Best Places to Work. We are committed to providing a healthy work-life balance for employees, and have developed a strong, collaborative team culture. We’ve gone from strength to strength over the last few years and have an exciting future ahead of us, which is testament to all the hard work and dedication the entire team puts in.”

Spike is the leading property management and tenant engagement software provider, with its solutions being used daily in more than 200 buildings across the UK.

Spike Lettings, its tenancy management solution, allows prospective tenants to easily browse and find available apartments online, make an initial enquiry, and progress through the reservation stage, all the way through to moving in. Whilst its tenant engagement portal, Spike Living, provides tenants with one simple, intuitive app, allowing them to communicate with building management and with each other – making life easier in a multitude of ways. From booking onsite amenities and services to reporting maintenance issues, the portal makes routine communication quick and easy.

The Sunday Times Best Places to Work recognises and celebrates the best employers in the UK based on feedback from employees and an independent assessment of workplace culture, leadership, and employee engagement and wellbeing.

For more information about Best Places to Work visit:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/static/best-places-to-work-2023/

Sustainability issues are a growing concern across all age groups. Among younger generations in particular, this concern is playing an increasingly important role when it comes to purchasing decisions.

Research reveals that Generation Z (Gen Z) place high importance on brands that reflect their values, with up to 72% willing to spend more on goods and services produced in a sustainable way. The same applies to Millennials who are just as eco-conscious, with 75% at the point of changing their buying habits to favour environmentally friendly products.

There is also emerging evidence that the priority placed on sustainability by Gen Z extends to accommodation decisions. Recent research into what Gen Z wants from their living environment found that “80% of Gen Zs said it was important that their home has sustainability credentials when considering a new place to live.”

With 25–34-year-olds making up 62% of all tenants in Build-to-Rent, there is an opportunity for operators to harness this collective concern to create more sustainable communities.

Barriers to Change

Our recent research report entitled Changing Behaviours investigated the barriers to change and identified the main reasons why tenants did not make the effort of becoming sustainable, from feelings of powerlessness, social norms and comparisons to mistrust.

Individuals often feel powerless to take action that can make a difference in mitigating an issue as serious as climate change, and this impacts their behaviour. Both our research and our discussions with tenants highlighted that in many cases, individuals believe that action at an individual level is unlikely to make a difference, especially when others around them aren’t doing the ‘right’ thing.

Furthermore, as humans, we frequently compare ourselves with others. This includes a comparison of our actions with those of others to determine the “correct” behaviour when it comes to the environment. If individuals believe that those around them are not engaging in pro-environmental behaviour, then they themselves are less likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. The opposite is also true – individuals will also change their behaviour to “match” others in a positive way, in order to avoid the disapproval of their peers – for example, altering energy consumption to replicate the reported usage of their neighbours.

Finally, if pro-environmental behaviour change programmes are perceived as lacking authenticity or ineffective, then individuals are unlikely to participate. Our discussions with tenants highlighted repeatedly that the way their accommodation provider approaches recycling, for instance, influences the level of trust that they have in their accommodation provider when it comes to wider sustainability initiatives. If recycling programmes are perceived as being tokenistic or ineffective, then tenants are likely to have reduced trust and reduced motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviours.

The Role Technology Plays in Inspiring Tenants 

Technology such as tenant engagement portals not only provide tenants with a centralised platform to access information about their building and communicate with management, but also provide an opportunity for tenants to engage with their community. By helping tenants to feel better connected to where they live, this increases the likelihood that they will feel more attached and responsible to their local community, and ultimately more likely to behave in a way that benefits the collective good.

Tenant engagement portals also offer a central place where operators can easily share information and advice about recycling, energy and water conservation, and sustainable transportation options, helping to better inform tenants. We’ve seen clients share tips on reducing food waste and provide guides on how to create your own compost bins. By providing easy access to this information, tenants become more informed and inspired to take action.

Tenant portals, like Spike Living, can connect tenants with other like-minded neighbours via various online clubs and forums. By creating a place where tenants can share their own useful tips, organise their own community events such as neighbourhood clean-ups or volunteer days, this helps to instil a sense of togetherness and collective focus.

Furthermore, operators can also use this as an opportunity to report on their own impact and the initiatives they are undertaking, such as switching to environmentally friendly cleaning products, replacing communal lights to use energy efficient light bulbs, as well as openly responding to feedback from tenants.

Additionally, Spike Global has worked with Utopi to enable tenants to view their own energy usage and track their progress towards reducing their consumption in the Spike Living portal. While a tenant might look at their smart meter and not grasp what a kilowatt-hour is, showing they are using more energy than their neighbours will make them instantly better informed. Examples include the amount of energy used compared with others living in a similar-sized apartment, the amount of carbon used, or how much energy is saved by turning the heating down by one click.

Operators are also able to use this data to set targets for reduction in consumption and spot outliers and poor performing tenants, allowing them to offer advice and support, as well as highlight potential maintenance issues.

Working to change the behaviour of tenants can reap significant rewards. For example, strategies that tap into the natural human instinct to conform to social norms – such as providing feedback on consumption and comparison with others – can result in behaviour changes that reduce carbon emissions in the region of 7%-35%. And that’s just according to some more conservative estimates!

Summary

Tenant engagement portals can be a powerful tool for inspiring sustainable behaviour among tenants. By providing information and education, encouraging competition and collaboration, and offering greater transparency, this can create a more environmentally conscious community.

It’s easy to imagine a not-too-distant future where a property’s environmental credentials and the property operator’s ethos around sustainability may be the deciding factor for sustainability-savvy prospective tenants.

Want to learn more? Then download our Changing Behaviours report below.