Living – The Ultimate Franchise

Written by Ed Ellerington, Chief Executive Officer at Packaged Living

Alien, Lethal Weapon and Space Odyssey all prove the adage that “good things come in threes” is wrong. The best series come in fours.

Welcome to the UK residential rental sector in 2025, where the potential tetralogy or living quartet is beginning to take shape…

Multi-family housing, the original sell out, a 2012 blockbuster, which has grown in popularity from a single scheme in East London (Abbeville Apartments) to now over 90,000 apartments with an estimated total sector size of £35bn.

Up next, Single-family housing commencing at scale in 2021. The oft maligned sequel, so often a flop but if done right the vaulting horse to a successful series. With over 20,000 homes currently in production, and according to recent data released by Knight Frank, over £3.7bn invested since 2023 alone, Single-family is quickly becoming the classic Godfather PII to the Godfather in its popularity (yes, I know the Godfather is a trilogy but stay with me!).

So, what next? An estimated £45bn of investment is expected into the living sector over the next 5 years. With this increasing appetite, new tranches of living assets begin to get scripted. Overall demand is driving time to deploy and scale more rapidly than ever before. Behind the scenes, a market backdrop of inflationary pressure and policy intervention has created significant challenges for ‘mom and pop’ landlords.

Over 400,000 rental homes have left the UK market since 2016, resulting in 25% fewer rental properties available compared to 2019—despite the surge in institutional investment into the sector. Combined with the declining affordability of homeownership, this has created an ever-growing audience eagerly awaiting the third… and maybe even the fourth instalment of the franchise…

As with all the best quadrilogies, the third part of the series ties the first and second parts together (think Luke discovering Darth Vadar is his father) thus it is with the with the living quartet. Garden Style Housing has created a bridge of gateway homes between city centre Multi-family apartments, and suburban Single-family houses. These homes, often in fringe urban, edge of town and city locations, offer modern town house solutions to those seeking the buzz of the town and city centre but with the benefits of larger family friendly homes. The need for such properties can be evidenced by the proportion of people living in the Private Rental Sector aged between 35 – 44 years rising to 30%, up from 17% a decade ago. There is a question as to whether the trilogy of Multi-family, Single-family and Garden Style is enough, but no there is seemingly a gap, a twist in the tale, a cliffhanger…..

And so, we come to the climatic finale and as with so many great tetralogies, we end at the beginning. Co-living. Studio apartments for the younger more transient resident providing the bridge between school and university to those seeking new jobs, often in new cities. The scale of the opportunity has sent many, including us at Packaged Living, clambering to pioneer this next stage of living assets. Co-living is now fully in production, and coming soon to a city near you, with Savills forecasting a market audience of 1.9m residents. 600,000 of these are predicted to be in London alone, where we at Packaged plan to grow at scale over the next three years. When considering the sector currently consists of 4,000 operational homes today, the potential for expansion is vast.

Ultra-urban, urban, fringe-urban and suburban, there’s something in this series for everyone. You never know, the producers may just keep going…. later living, affordable, Gen 3 student…..a hexalogy – Star Wars anyone?