#242 Grainger's Michael Keaveney on Build-to-Rent and a radical fix for social housing

About this episode

Michael Keaveney, Director of Land, Development and Acquisition at Grainger PLC, has spent nearly eight years helping to reshape the country's largest listed landlord into a focused, operationally driven Build-to-Rent specialist. In a wide-ranging conversation for Propcast, he covers the logic behind Grainger's in-house model, the progress of its joint venture with Transport for London and a detailed proposal for how social housing in England might realistically be funded. Keaveney arrived at Grainger two years after chief executive Helen Gordon, stepping into a business in the process of significant transformation. From a standing start of one delivered scheme in Barking, the business now has 9,874 BTR homes across England and Wales, underpinned by an operational platform built on a deliberate decision to keep operations in-house. "All of the staff in the buildings that we developed are our staff, they're Grainger people," Keaveney explains. "It gives you absolute control over the product that you're delivering and the customer relationship." The result is a business running typically at 96 to 98 per cent occupancy. "If you don't control that relationship in-house, it's very diff