Sustainability can mean many different things to different people. In the real estate industry, sustainability efforts have been particularly focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency programs and the use of less polluting materials. The build sector accounts for a whopping 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and with urbanisation on the rise - 60% of the world’s population is expected to be living in cities by 2030 - more construction will be required to cope with our urban sprawl.Therefore, there’s never been a more poignant time to tackle sustainability and more efficient forms of living such as coliving are crucial.

But for us at B-Hive Living, sustainability is far more than managing energy, water and waste. It does not mean that we don’t strive to do these things well to minimise our impact on the environment, reduce our operating costs and meet the expectations of our increasingly environmentally conscious customer base. After all, sustainability is no longer an optional activity. Today’s consumers demand and expect such considerations in most aspects of their lives. A survey by Nielsen confirms that 81% of consumers around the globe believe it is extremely or very important for companies to have environmental improvement as an objective.

For most of the 21st century, the primary concern of the real estate and construction industries has been profit, safety and now carbon emission reductions. They’re really valid and important considerations – particularly if the industry is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, in line with the Paris agreement goals. As designers of the built environment, however, we must not lose sight of the undeniable potential of buildings and the communities that inhabit them to enable a healthier and more fulfilling existence, and our own ability to influence the human experience positively by designing homes with such intention. As Winston Churchill said “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”.

In ancient Greece, master builders were already concerned with how buildings impact the everyday experience of their users, and for a good reason. More than 90% of our time is spent in buildings and therefore the quality and design of the places where we choose to live and who we choose to live with are key factors influencing our health, wellbeing and overall sense of happiness. This is not just a ‘nice to have’. As rightfully captured by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing is essential to attaining sustainable development. In the UK alone, one in three houses in the private rented sector were deemed unfit for human habitation and the cost of treating medical conditions associated with poor housing has been estimated to be as high as £2.5bn per year with associated medical conditions including respiratory and circulatory diseases and mental health.

‍

‍

For the homebuilding community, sustainability must thus focus on the ‘social value’ created by building healthy homes that are able to have a tangible impact on the health and wellbeing of current and future generations rather than being restricted to an energy efficiency drive. This is imperative to investors now as much as future generations. In the end, creating enduring value to investors in real estate is about keeping buildings occupied now and the foreseeable future and this boils down to four simple metrics – rent value, occupancy rate, lease length and covenant strength. So if a sustainable approach based on building healthy homes and communities of occupants can enhance those drivers, we’ve got a win-win scenario for society, investors and occupants, and our own experience and many independent studies suggest that.

An independent survey by Saint-Gobain of over 3,000 UK homeowners and renters on health and wellbeing in the home surprised many when it revealed that 1/3 of renters are prepared to pay higher rent for a healthy environment. It appears that consumers are increasingly catching on to this life-changing equation. If we are lucky enough to live to 80, most of us will have spent 72 years indoors, and 80-90% of our health outcomes are driven by our daily behaviours and lifestyles emanating from our choice of home, community and surrounding environment. This is why consumers and investors are starting to embrace housing that supports health and wellbeing outcomes. According to the Global Wellness Institute, real estate projects associated with those qualities are projected to reach $197 billion by 2022.

For us, this is one of the underlying drivers behind the phenomenal growth of coliving. When we started to build B-Hive Living, we were living in London and we experienced first-hand the challenges of renters seeking to secure good quality healthy homes. Like in many metropolitan areas of the world, the rental market is dominated by part-time amateur landlords whose primary concern is neither supplying high-quality healthy homes nor the health and wellbeing of their tenants, and the chronic lack of supply in those places means they can get away with almost anything – tiny and poorly maintained spaces with high prices, lack of customer service, hidden costs, fuzzy contracts and the list goes on. That’s why when the consumer sees coliving operators seeking to deliver an experience that puts the client first they are blown away. It is as simple as that.

‍

‍

This is also why when we founded B-Hive Living, we didn’t see ourselves solving an affordability issue alone, but first and foremost a quality and health one, and this has placed us on a different path to most operators at the time. Right from the word go, we realised that simply sourcing properties in the open market and then sub-letting them with minimal alteration to consumers was not going to solve the pain-points of most renters. Instead, we made a conscious decision to place creating purpose-built homes that actively support people’s health and wellbeing through wellness-led design, technologies and activities at the heart of our offer to consumers and made this the central pillar of our sustainability pledge.

Three years on, we’re proud that our residents consistently rate the quality of our living spaces followed by the calibre of our community as the primary reason for living with us. And what’s more, over 60% notice an improvement on their overall health and wellbeing after moving in with us. We are delighted that our vision has set us on a path to make a meaningful difference on the lives of the professionals who live with us, but also made us realise that this is not rocket science. As you’ll soon realise, this is about intention rather than unique technical skills, so we should be all able strive and achieve this.

Creating an experience that supports wellbeing and sustainability starts with developing an understanding of your resident’s lifestyle and their preferences. Before building our first space, we conducted a series of focus groups and plenty of research which taught us an awful lot about empowering consumers to make sustainable choices while uplifting their wellbeing and lifestyle. For instance, the ‘perception of control’ is closely linked to our sense of happiness and it’s known to reduce stress levels. To integrate that in our customer journey, we adopted a smart heating system that gives our residents the ability to adjust the temperature of their rooms and schedule activation to suit their specific lifestyle and needs, while allowing us to save energy. The system gives them remote access from anywhere via an app and gives us the ability to monitor and influence energy use within our spaces.

‍

‍

We also learned that there are many features associated with health and wellbeing that can be incorporated into a home or development at little or no extra cost. Providing dimmer switches rather than simply the choice of having the lights on and off is a simple example about how we gave our users a greater sense of control and comfort by allowing personalisation of their space. Another example is optimising daylight, which is well proven to impact our mental wellbeing and productivity, through building orientation, larger windows and the use of skylights.

I know what you’re thinking right now - this is so simple. So that makes two of us that don’t understand why most people don’t already incorporate these things into their homes and lifestyles.

Another empowering lesson for us was to learn that while we are all different, there are many elements of a building design that almost universally affect how we feel within a space – thermal comfort, shapes, colours, symmetry and so on and these are all rooted in nature. This is called biophilia. We’ve all developed a genetic connection to the natural world built up through hundreds of thousands of years of living in nature in the age-old struggle to be fit and survive, and biophilia suggests we can leverage this connection through design to enhance people’s health and wellbeing. When most people hear the term ‘sustainable design’, they often think of the way we impact the natural world. In contrast, as practitioners of biophilic design we seek to incorporate elements of nature into our spaces because of their benefits to human health and productivity.

Learning to combine and harness those elements have been great insights that have enabled us to create unique spaces that deliver both healthy outcomes and a ‘wow factor’. Take this small communal space. By combining abundant daylight and plant life which is known to lower the heart rate and blood pressure with reclaimed wood and a soothing green wall colour which is known to calm and comfort, we sought to create a space that supports stress reduction and a tranquil mood. Since this is a communal space intended to support connectivity, we broke away from uniformity in the flooring by mixing three different types of wood to engage the senses, creating stimuli. During quiet times, the breakfast bar mounted in the window, overlooking 500 sqm of landscaped gardens, can also serve as a ‘refuge’ for residents seeking to withdraw from group activity and focus on their own work with nature helping to create mental engagement. The point being designing for health and wellness is a complex and fluid process and one must learn to balance usability with the intent to positively influence people’s health, attitude and overall happiness.

‍

‍

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, however, has led us to recognise that design alone cannot deliver healthier outcomes if a person does not want or feels unable to feel well due to the unsurmountable pressures of today’s professional life or an unprecedented life event such as this pandemic. This has encouraged us to be even more intentional about creating activities and content for our residents that empower them to build their resilience and lead a healthier lifestyle. For instance, since the beginning of the lockdown, we’ve been delivering a series of ‘wellness hacks’ which are practical tips provided on a weekly basis on how to eat well, sleep better, cohabit and work together, develop and retain a positive mindset and deal with anxiety and stress through mindfulness and fitness exercises and habits. We’ve also offered a whole host of social and wellness activities for free online from paint therapy and greek cuisine workshops to HIIT training and yoga classes. But equally, we became savvier in our vetting process of new residents seeking to select individuals with a genuine appreciation for the gift of life and the desire to live well and continuously get better.

This pandemic will have a considerable impact on our life choices going forward and we believe that this could be a once in a generation opportunity to change our approach to housing for the better. Even if a vaccine is found quickly, life is unlikely to simply return to the way it was before the pandemic. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, disease and poor air quality triggered population movements away from city centres which culminated in the propagation of our suburbs. On this occasion, we expect a shift away from the office environment and home working becoming more widespread, and the reason is simple - money. Sir Martin Sorrel - founder of the media empire WPP put it plainly when he recently declared “he’d rather invest the £35m he spends on expensive offices in people instead”. As a result, many office buildings will become redundant and they could become the foundation of our next generation of living spaces grounded on wellness-led sustainable principles.

With stress, anxiety and burnout on the rise, we must recognise the massive opportunity in front us should we shift our approach to sustainability in real estate. We must abandon the old paradigm of focusing on the 1% equation associated with the costs of energy, water and waste. Buildings are not simply assets to generate returns, they are homes we live in, and they influence at least 80% of our health outcomes.

As the authors Phillipa and Tom Carrier said in their book Designed for Wellbeing, “there isn’t a choice between human and financial success, they are one and the same”. Consumers want and deserve for us to deliver spaces with a build and design quality and customer experience able to simultaneously ensure human, economic and environmental prosperity.

It’s by doing so that we will deliver enduring financial performance to investors and sustainable value to society.