Three decades on from joining a graduate scheme during one of the deepest property recessions in living memory, Marcus Phayre-Mudge, fund manager and partner at Thames River Capital, has watched the listed real estate sector cycle through booms, busts, structural change and a creeping crisis of confidence between boards and shareholders. Speaking to Propcast host Andrew Teacher, the long-serving manager of TR Property Investment Trust delivers an unvarnished assessment of governance, manager-investor alignment, communications and the persistent question of scale that continues to challenge the UK market.

Phayre-Mudge begins by setting out a framework he still uses to explain the two distinct ways property cycles inflict damage. “There are two diseases for real estate,” he said. “One is a much more short, sharp shock, a bit like being punched in a pub. It hurts like hell, but it’s over quite quickly. That’s when you get a very dramatic change in the cost or availability of capital, which is what we saw in the GFC and more recently in 2021 with the dramatic change in the cost of money.”

The second, he warns, is more pernicious. “The other disease, which is actually much more insidious, more of a long COVID if you like, is the consequence of a long period of overdevelopment.” In periods like this, landlords across entire sectors become price-takers, dealing with tenants who know that competition to lease space places enormous downward pressure on rents.

His own entry into fund management came via a deliberate pivot away from surveying. Recalling a conversation with his boss at Knight Frank & Rutley over funding for an accounting night course, he laughed at the negotiation. “Marcus, if I fund this and you get the qualification, you’ll leave. I said: well, if you don’t fund it, I’ll also leave.”

The qualification opened the door to Henderson, predecessor to Janus Henderson, where alongside veteran fund manager Chris Turner he looked after the private allocation of TR Property Trust, then a smaller vehicle with exposure across both listed and private real estate. Later, in 1999, he assumed control of the listed property equity sleeves of two small Henderson diversified equity funds, each capitalised at between £20 million and £30 million, marking the start of his career in the public markets.

A move to Thames River Capital (TRC) in 2004 with mentor Chris Turner remains a moment Phayre-Mudge recalls fondly. “We told the founders of Thames River, Charlie Porter and Johnny Hughes-Morgan, that the only reason we’d really moved was because we didn’t have to change the name, which was entirely fortuitous.”

A new hybrid fund, blending equities with physical property, launched in 2005 and remains a source of pride. “That fund is still alive and strong and has never closed to redemptions,” he said, a particularly impressive feat given the recent difficulties faced by PAIFs in the UK as well as some of America’s largest real estate fund managers.

The Global Financial Crisis tested the model and, by his own account, came close to derailing it. “Whether by good judgment or good luck, probably a bit of both, we moved to 20% cash in both funds the quarter before Lehman went down. That’s why we survived.”

But he is quick to acknowledge the asymmetry that defines life in fund management. “If you’re a fund manager and you move to 20% cash and you’re wrong, you’ll massively underperform your benchmarks. If you’re right, your clients are still losing money, just considerably less than if they’d been fully invested.”

Among the more provocative observations of his career has been how the rise of passive capital has hollowed out the dialogue between boards and shareholders. “Around 20 years ago, I only ever engaged with the C-suite and had virtually no engagement with boards. That has changed a lot. We’ve had to feed back views to boards behind the scenes, partly because so much capital has moved passive that boards are living in something of a vacuum. They get feedback through formal channels via brokers and bankers, but you hear what you want to hear through those channels.”

That conviction underpins his views on a generation of CEOs and the quality of governance they preside over. He singled out the rise of finance directors moving into the top seat, an evolution he regards with mixed feelings. “There’s always the exception that proves the rule, and one must call out David Sleath for what he’s done at Segro. He’s been there a long time now and is a good example of a CFO who became CEO.”

But, he added, the picture in smaller companies is different. “In the smaller and mid-cap space, I’d say you absolutely need these businesses to be run by people with a property background and a property outlook.”

Alignment between management and shareholders is the thread that runs through much of his commentary. He cited Big Yellow as the gold standard. “The best example of all is Nick Vetch and Jimmy Gibson at Big Yellow. Obviously Jimmy is now retiring, but Nick founded the business and remains executive chair. You know you’re in safe hands because there is alignment.”

LondonMetric’s Andrew Jones and Shaftesbury Capital’s Ian Hawksworth drew similar praise as executives capable both of articulating a strategy and demonstrating meaningful skin in the game.

The era of zero interest rates, he argued, produced a swathe of externally managed vehicles that have since had to confront the consequences of weak structures. “Some very smart people, smart possibly at creating structures rather than necessarily skilled at spending other people’s money, launched a full range of externally managed vehicles.”

On notice periods, his message is unambiguous. “A one-year notice period should be standard. I don’t speak with a forked tongue here. I’ve had a rolling one-year notice period on TR Property since I started in 1997. You’re always 12 months away from the chop, but if you do a good job the board will back you. You can’t have notice periods that are essentially just poison pills.”

He also points to the internalisation of Supermarket Income REIT by Atrato Partners as an example of improved manager-shareholder alignment.

Life Science REIT drew a particularly sharp post-mortem. “I think the creator of Life Science REIT is talented at spotting a business opportunity and market timing,” he said. “Unbeknownst to him, the high noon moment turned out to be the IPO. But the capital had been raised, (was quickly spent on an ecletic mix of standing assets and development opportunities) and the value destruction was borne by shareholders not the manager”

Phayre-Mudge argues that had management been more closely aligned with shareholders, the outcome might have been materially different. The point carries added weight as the sector begins to recover. UK leasing activity across London, Oxford and Cambridge accelerated by 6% year on year in Q1 2026, with Cambridge alone accounting for more than 166,000 sq ft of take-up. That momentum sits within a broader structural story, with the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board and Public First estimating the corridor could deliver £78 billion in additional gross value added if growth accelerates, underpinned by 3,000 knowledge-intensive firms employing 152,000 people and generating £45 billion in annual turnover across the arc.

On the UK majors, Phayre-Mudge is sanguine about Simon Carter’s departure from British Land. “Does it mean there’s a problem inside British Land? Absolutely not. Their campuses, and Broadgate in particular, will continue to thrive. Their retail warehouse portfolio is very good, if fully valued, which is contributing to the share price’s 35% discount.”

Canada Water, however, appears to him more burden than opportunity. “Perhaps a bridge too far, even for a balance sheet the size of British Land’s.”

His critique extended squarely to City Hall. “Unfortunately it’s taken a long time for the Mayor of London to wake up to the fact that he has essentially destroyed large-scale residential development through unrealistic affordable housing requirements. You can’t solve the problem by ensuring that no developer can make any money. The developer will simply wait for a change in government.”

Landsec’s foray into residential drew similarly direct treatment. “Of all the sectors Landsec could have chosen, residential is the hardest to make stack without prior knowledge of that market. The single reason the wider market didn’t like that strategic shift is because it simply couldn’t explain how it would be in any way earnings accretive.”

He sees a wider strategic failure among the UK majors. “Tritax Big Box barely existed 15 years ago. Landsec and British Land could easily have reduced their shopping centre exposure and moved into logistics. But hindsight is a beautiful thing.”

Grainger was treated more sympathetically. “Helen Gordon has done a good job over the years repositioning Grainger, fixing the balance sheet and giving it a clear strategy,” he said, while warning that political risk continues to weigh on the sector. ‘However the earnings yield remains too modest for many REIT investors’.

The US multifamily market, by contrast, offers what he sees as a clearer model. “What you’re selling to the investor is something eminently secure, with genuine index linkage, run with efficiencies that can only be driven by scale.”

Few episodes attracted sharper criticism than Unite’s pursuit of Empiric. “Our counter-argument was straightforward: if you’re an undergrad you want to be in a building with hundreds of other people, facilities, a bar. Postgrads aren’t getting out of the PRS for purpose-built student housing.”

When a profit warning followed within days of the takeover announcement, he was withering. “The whole thing was a catalogue of disaster. Whether it’s reality, communications or both, this is the price you pay for being in the public market. Shareholders say: I no longer trust you. And trust is at the heart of all of this.”

Hammerson, by contrast, has earned its way back into his portfolio. “The new CEO has been sensible in what he’s said so far,” he noted, while flagging Brent Cross as a genuine opportunity and questioning the retention of Terrasses du Port. “We are back owning Hammerson shares after a period away.”

The conversation closed on the structural challenge that has dogged the sector since the REIT regime was introduced in January 2007: scale, and the obsession with net asset value that constrains it.

“We’ve had some dark days where we described NAV as standing for Not Actual Value,” he said. “You’ve got to go to the US model, which is earnings-based.”

The logic, he believes, is straightforward. “When the underlying market is weak, REITs are reflecting that by trading at large discounts. Their boards won’t allow them to raise capital below NAV, so they’re hamstrung. But that’s exactly the moment when you should be raising money, and that’s precisely what happens in the US. That’s how you grow these companies.”

Consolidation, he added, is now a matter of necessity rather than choice. “The wealth managers who own these businesses have themselves consolidated enormously. There simply is no place for a sub-£500 million market cap business in that world.”

LondonMetric and Tritax Big Box, he argues, demonstrate what is possible. “We encourage companies to raise capital to make accretive acquisitions and we are far less sensitive about whether the price is above or below a figure pencilled in by one of four major valuation firms.”

Asked for his closing advice to listed CEOs, Phayre-Mudge returned to first principles. “Show some respect to the owners of the business. If you think you’re being smart enough to hoodwink people, you will be found out. Building and maintaining trust is sacrosanct and you will be hugely rewarded for it. Because for all of these people, it is a very lucrative environment. And in many respects, a very safe one.”

The day job, he reminded listeners, is rarely complicated in concept, however demanding in execution. “Do not obsess about short-term performance, that’s your shareholders’ job. That’s my job. Your job is to get on and do the day job: spell out what you’re going to do, be clear, be honest when things go wrong. It’s all very straightforward. It’s what we all tell our children. Work hard, do your best.”

Tom Sleigh, Chairman of the Planning and Transportation Committee for the City of London Corporation, is the youngest planning chair the City has ever had, and potentially the country. Working in one of the most important square miles to the UK economy, infrastructure must be at the heart of all decisions made.

The City has undergone a revival in recent years, driven largely by the macro and micro trends since the end of COVID. As Chair of the Planning and Transport Committee, Sleigh acknowledges he has got a lot of plates spinning to keep things running smoothly. On transportation, Sleigh believes the Corporation has a responsibility to provide high quality streets that ensure the smooth flow of people, whether that be on foot, bicycle or other forms of transport. It is the planning side that Sleigh says gets him asked far more questions, but this is the element he views as fairly straightforward. He was to continue to offer a predictable, stable, plan-led planning system that investors, developers and everyone else in the chain wanted to come into business with. Sleigh acknowledges that this is different from the perception sometimes given off, with many people seeing it as adversarial and that often people believe Planning Committees view all change as bad.

Sleigh went further to explain how various organisations get a far heavier weighting than others when it comes to planning. These come in many forms, such as statutory bodies, heritage bodies and environmental bodies, although the latter less so in London. This is before you get to the many letters of objection from those ‘who are fully signed up to what seems to be a national pastime of objecting to planning applications.’ The City, Sleigh argues, is different and an outlier. He feels things would be better if people were more like this, with last year acting as their best year for applications in the front door in the last decade – and that’s when they started counting! Last year Sleigh’s Committee approved half a million square metres of new grade A office space, with a 96% approval rate overall. Sleigh says this is how planning should be: not adversarial. But, he notes, it has become more so, and is probably at its worst in the last five to ten years.

The secret to this proactive engagement is a very clear policy document, titled City Plan 2040. It is a few months away from adoption and enforcement, but it already carries a huge amount of weight in Committee decisions. It is extensive, covering how high you can build in the east of the City, through to material reuse and elements on quality design. If compliance is achieved here then the application will move onto stage two, where applicants will engage with case officers and the wider team, whether that be a heritage expert or someone with an engineering background to ensure it can become committee ready. Fundamentally, it is ensuring an application is policy compliant and then ensuring that planning officers have helped work it up to a high standard. Sleigh is proud to say that a lot of people they engage with say the City’s planning officers set a very high bar.

When asked about the lack of resources that planning departments face nationally, something that has steadily increased over the last twenty years, Sleigh acknowledges the problem. Planning teams have seen budgets cuts and headcount reductions, like many government organisations, and Sleigh feels that is reflected in the outcomes. The City is different, with a fantastically qualified and larger team, which matters a lot. The projects they work on can be the difference between a major bank coming to the City or not, with a big push to get HQs back into the City post-pandemic. This all matters, inspiring confidence and stability which will drive more international businesses to join them.

In an area steeped in as much history as the City, construction can often unearth the unexpected, such as recently at 85 Grace Church Street which uncovered an element of a Roman Forst in the basement when excavating, which was part of the largest building north of the Alps at the time of construction! This does slow down the planning process, with a change of application back at committee adding costs and time, but the result is a free to enter museum in the basement which encourages a more lively streetscape and helps differentiate it from competing cities such as Singapore and New York.

The City isn’t just about offices. Sleigh talks passionately about the work his team has done to make it more appealing to people outside of finance, known as Destination City which is an acknowledgement of the desire for a lively, more public City. He references the original designs for the Barbican Centre, which was supposed to be lively for people to enjoy both at ground level and on the pedestrian walkways. The City can often be viewed as just a nine to five, Monday to Friday place and Sleigh is determined that is not the case. He acknowledges this has challenges, just as Soho did when they rolled out al fresco dining during and after COVID. The City suits many different needs and isn’t trying to be ‘gritty and fun’ like Shoreditch or Brick Lane, but also doesn’t face the planning issues that they do. This is largely down to the City’s very small population which is almost entirely focussed in the Barbican. This doesn’t mean they are without their issues. As they are often not the landowner there are few levers of encouragement or coercion that can be used, therefore their use must be strategic. One of these is the City’s cultural use policy, where a building over 10,000 square metres must have some form of cultural use, which developers largely seem to support, states Sleigh. Hotels are another area for expansion in the City, with all the data showing London as a whole has a shortage of hotel beds. This can have an interesting impact in the office space where grade B can be quite difficult to convert to grade A, but is very easy to convert into hotels.

Turning to politics, Sleigh is asked about the current government’s various pledges on planning. Sleigh explains his disbelief at the sheer bureaucracy and levels of paperwork that even modest applications require, expanding to the volume of huge applications appearing at committee which, Sleigh assures, he reads every page of. Does AI have a role to play here? Sleigh is unsure but is under no doubt committees will probably decrease in size as the technology catches up, alongside changes in delegation within planning. But Sleigh thinks, on a personal level, that planning isn’t going far enough. He shares a few ideas, including the reduction of the threshold of decision making as local plans have increased significantly in length and are often out of date before they’re finished! Sleigh feels the City does a good job, with the most evidence based, forward looking and pragmatic local plan.

From banking to building, this week on PropCast we are joined by Homes England’s Innovation Lead Ed Jezeph. With an insight into Homes England’s new bank, modern construction methods what positives there are for the future of housebuilding in England.

Ed starts by saying how excited he is for Homes England to be launching a bank, noting how it is a natural progression for them as an organisation. Whilst the investment directorate within Homes England has existed for over a decade, largely focussed on debt lending and more recently equity investment and guarantees, this has provided Homes England with plenty of experience. Armed with this experience, they’re now launching the National Housing Bank with 16 billion of government funding announced in June 2025 which, Jezeph says “gives us new funding flexibilities.” He acknowledges some in the market may see them as stepping on other people’s toes, but states “we're not here to compete with the market. We're not here to cut the market. We're here to fill in the gaps. We're a lender of last resort. So, when we talk to our customers, as our borrowers on development finance, we want to know why banks won't lend to them.” He continues to concede this does present some challenges, including but not solely ensuring a cash return for the taxpayer of between 6-8%. All of this has impacted on the housing market in a negative way. He goes on to argue, however, that the real return is "to those communities of stuff being built and the impact and the importance of housing and the social value and the wider economic benefit,” and is therefore worth it.

When challenged about Modern Methods of Construction, or MMC, and what went wrong, Jezeph concedes immediately “there'll be people listening to this, possibly rolling their eyes,” and also acknowledges that Homes England were involved throughout, including when L&G put their modular business into administration. Jezeph says the construction skills shortage, which MMC was designed to tackle, was chronic and the government and Homes England responded to the market dynamic to help tackle this. Over a billion pounds was invested into the sector during this period, with plenty of startups full of energy leading the charge. Whilst some will undoubtedly criticise Homes England for investing around £135 million into the sector, alongside £466 million of private capital, Jezeph disagrees. “The smart response should be ‘we should absolutely do it again.’ Because without that sort of funding, innovation isn't going to happen. Fundamentally, the lack of innovation is why we are where we are now, where you've got big listed companies, Taylor Wimpy and others making huge allocations of cash in their annual results to pay for bad buildings.”

This point is further reinforced when considering that the five largest house builders have got about £3.1 billion in building safety issues for legacy buildings. To put into comparison, that is six times the amount of capital that’s been invested into MMC. Jezeph goes on to state that reflection on the failures is needed and that “many of the businesses that closed had business module failure.” There was a huge amount of ambition originally in terms of high-quality homes delivered quickly, more sustainable and more energy efficient, a view not everyone within the sector shares. L&G’s cross-laminated timber approach is often referenced, with planning delays at a handful of sites causing their factory to become unsustainable.

Moving onto more positive topics, Jezeph explains how the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development initiated a research program in 2022 that brought them to the UK, Japan and Sweden to learn about our modular homes. Jezeph particularly focusses on how the English aesthetic plays an important role, stating “you only realise how we’re perceived internationally when you go overseas and you hear those voices of admiration.” Jezeph is then pressed on the next steps, noting multiple schemes that were left empty for extended periods whilst the fire brigade decided whether they were safe or not. He agrees that this was an ongoing challenge with MMC and again highlights some of the problems of innovation: “the London Fire Brigade and the National Fire Council's Chiefs hadn't seen a building of this kind at this height and this scale, particularly post-Grenville before, so understandably they brought a level of scrutiny to that project to build confidence.” Fortunately, developers were often ready for this and provided fantastic digital information to try and smooth this process over. This has been a continued trend, with digital information helping secure gateway progress with the building safety regulator for recent modular student accommodation schemes, a surprise for some within the industry.

Some may ask, why the focus on modular homes? Jezeph argues that this is part of innovation and forward thinking, moving us in new directions. “Fundamentally we've got enough brick capacity, you could build about 170,000 homes a year out of bricks,” he states. “So, if we're going to get to our 1.5 million homes objective over five years, we know we need to build differently. This will either be smaller homes or using less bricks and no one is voting for a smaller house!” Jezeph follows up by arguing we will have to change what we build and how we build it. This includes cross-department work as, whilst their mandate sits within housing, there are other stakeholders involved, such as those with mandates around innovation and engaging new industries who want to make positive changes. Jezeph agrees with the negative views around the current construction labour crisis, arguing that the government announced a £600 million construction skills package in March last year, but this will need supercharging through innovation.

Asked what Jezeph would change about modular housing and innovation, armed with the information he has now. Jezeph said “I’m interested in the project failures, the projects that went wrong, where that interface between the off-site product, the foundations and the traditional groundworks didn't quite work out.” He continued saying “the coordination piece, the technical piece, you know that's the opportunity for us to learn because we know that manufacturing processes deliver quite high-quality products that I think we can take for granted.” He goes on to discuss integration, finding a way to work within the UK’s deeply cyclical housing and construction market.

Jezeph finishes by stating Homes England’s purpose: “We are a housing delivery body. We are here to support as many homes as possible. 40,000 is about what we deliver at the moment, and with our new funding it will be increasing to over 60,000. We will be here to support our partners in the sector and we remain there as a partner to industry and innovation is caught in that.”

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 difficult to get to that data," Keaveney says.

He is also clear about what Build-to-Rent actually is. "People misunderstand what Build-to-Rent is. It's not about buildings at all. It never was. It's about service and product," Keaveney says.

The joint venture with Transport for London, operating under the Connected Living London banner, has taken longer to deliver than either party originally envisaged. COVID and the second staircase consultation both intervened. Keaveney is unapologetic about the decision to pause. "A single staircase building is perfectly safe, that's our view, it always will be my view if they're well-built and well-maintained," Keaveney says. He adds, on the question of proceeding with consented single-staircase buildings regardless, that Grainger will always build to the latest regulatory standard, and in the case of recent TfL schemes went back into planning with revised schemes to update them in line with the latest regulations. The revised schemes are now moving through procurement, with contractors on board for several. "We've got 1,500 homes at the moment with planning consents," Keaveney says, adding that the JV has also begun forward funding elements alongside housebuilders such as Barratt Redrow. Keaveney goes on to describe the broader TfL land bank as "untapped," though the binding constraint remains the same.

"The big question really is to what extent, how much grant support do these developments need to make them viable?" That question of viability runs throughout the podcast discussion. On the comparison between Build-to-Rent yields and Gilts - ultimately the question of risk-reward in the sector, he is equally direct. Comparing the two, he says, "is a category error." "A nominal Gilt doesn't grow. It's not indexed. We've got growth inherent in the Build-to-Rent model," Keaveney says. The correct comparable, he argues, is the index-linked Gilt. "We're not in the game of second-guessing that the growth rate is going to be, for some reason, structurally different in the next 10 or 20 years," Keaveney adds.

The political backdrop is, Keaveney acknowledges, genuinely difficult. He accepts it is "a difficult political sell" to be seen granting concessions to the private sector, tracing the problem back to a narrative that successive governments helped create. "The original narrative was entirely wrong," Keaveney says. "They've boxed themselves into a position whereby developers and private equity and private capital investing in housing is an inherent 'evil'."

When regulation and cost make the baseline hurdle rate unachievable, he notes, development simply stops. "The private sector goes, 'Well, by the way, it's no longer viable. And so we won't be building,'" Keaveney says. He is equally frustrated by the failure to interrogate the scale of bad practice with any rigour. "No one asks what percentage. How much of the market acts like that?" Keaveney says. "I'm absolutely convinced that if we were building 200,000 homes a year in the private sector, you would never hear, 'Well, what percentage of those homes are defective?' At the moment you just hear about the defective ones," he adds.

It is on finding sustainable financing solutions that Keaveney's thinking has recently been focused. The report, "Homes for People We Need," published in the latter part of last year and to which Keaveney led on, was written out of a growing concern that the debate around social housebuilding was proceeding without any serious engagement with what it would actually cost. "I was getting really concerned over a period of a year and a half of hearing people call for 90,000 social homes and then making the statement, 'And we've got the money, we just need the will,' and thinking, 'I don't think you understand how much money that is,'" Keaveney says.

"If you understand the cost and value of rental housing, which obviously Grainger does, you understand fundamentally the lower the rent, the lower the value of the home. And therefore the lower the rent you want in terms of affordable homes, the bigger the gap you're creating for viability," Keaveney explains. Low rent, in other words, requires a larger subsidy. That basic relationship was the impetus for the report.

The numbers it produces are considerable. Modelling across all 295 local authority areas in England, covering one-, two- and three-bedroom flats as well as houses, and assuming a 50-50 split between suburban and urban development, "the ask is, in practice, £18.84 billion of grant per year to achieve 90,000 homes," Keaveney says, equating to roughly £209,000 per home. Beyond the grant requirement, "if you want to build 90,000 social homes, you also have to find nine to ten billion pounds of capital willing to invest in the income," Keaveney adds.

He is also blunt about a widely held misconception: the idea that social homes will pay for themselves over time is, he says, simply wrong. "They will not justify the capital cost," Keaveney says. The registered provider sector, meanwhile, needs attention in its own right. "RPs need to be recapitalised to deal with today’s challenges and to add to housing supply," Keaveney says, pointing to the combination of net-zero obligations, Awaab's Law requirements and withdrawn retrofit funding as leaving many providers caught between competing pressures.

As for where the money comes from, conventional routes are, in his view, largely exhausted. "We are tapped out of the bond market and we've taxed everyone to the top of the Laffer curve. So you don't have the ability to use tax or borrowing, which would be cheaper money, so you need to find a way. Tax credits are the way," Keaveney says.

The mechanism he proposes draws on the American Low-Income Housing Tax Credit model. Corporations would be able to purchase future tax credits at a discount, generating immediate capital for the Treasury while locking in a lower long-term tax liability for the buyer. The implied return for a purchasing corporation is around seven per cent. In effect, the Treasury gets more money at the start, because companies pay part of their future corporation tax early. But over the next ten years it then collects less tax than it otherwise would have done, because those tax credits are used up. The question is whether the savings generated by the programme outweigh that shortfall.

Keaveney's answer lies in the cost of temporary accommodation, currently running at around £2.3 billion a year and rising. Rather than comparing that saving against a conventional Gilt, he argues it should be treated as an index-linked liability. Were this to be capitalised at the index-linked Gilt rate prevailing at the time of the analysis, approximately 1.25 per cent per annum, the figure would have come to around £180 billion. "Enough to build, by my numbers, a million homes in social rent for just getting rid of the temporary accommodation bill," Keaveney says. Add the reduction in housing benefit and the tax revenues generated by construction activity, and the fiscal case becomes, he believes, credible.

The remaining question is whether the Office for Budget Responsibility would treat the mechanism as off-balance sheet, in the manner of PFI. "What we're trying to get at the moment is an acknowledgment from the Treasury and OBR that this would be off-balance sheet," Keaveney says. "And if it's off-balance sheet, then you have effectively... someone said this to me the other day, they said, 'This would be the Holy Grail.'"

Plans of this scale, Keaveney notes, run over ten to fifteen years, outstripping any single political cycle, and will only succeed if they attract genuine cross-party support. The commercial and political case, as he sets it out, is carefully constructed. Whether the will exists to match it is, as of yet, an open question and one that Westminster has been reluctant to answer so far.

Keaveney closes on something more personal. The son of Irish parents who came to London in the 1960s, his father a carpenter, his mother having left school at fourteen, Keaveney grew up watching his parents build a life through hard work and good fortune.

Members of his own extended family grew up in council housing and went on to build successful careers. "Good quality homes may not help the parents immediately, but it definitely helps the kids," Keaveney says. It is a reminder that behind the subsidy calculations and the balance sheet arguments lies a straightforward conviction: that housing is not just an asset class, and that where people live shapes what becomes possible for them.

Across England’s south coast, a quiet experiment in coastal regeneration is under way. Partnering with local authorities across Torbay, Weymouth and Dover, a JV between Milligan and Willmott Dixon is proving how some of the country’s forgotten towns can be revitalised for new generations. Milligan’s Stuart Harris and Willmott Dixon’s David Atkinson speak to Andrew Teacher alongside David Carter from Torbay Council.

In this week’s episode of PropCast, José María Pons, joins Andrew Teacher, co-founder at Lauder Teacher, the global strategic communications agency, to discuss the founding of SQUARE – a discrete Ibiza-based event for a select number of industry leaders in Ibiza.

In this week’s Propcast in partnership with Property Week, Andrew Teacher discusses with Peter George from Ealing Council about urban development. As Strategic Director for Economy and Sustainability, he oversees six departments spanning planning, housing delivery, economic growth, schools, leisure facilities and building control. He argues that the emphasis on economy is no accident.

In this week’s Propcast in partnership with Property Week, Andrew Teacher discusses with Adrian D’Enrico of Atrato how Social Housing REIT has rebuilt confidence in specialised supported housing. The episode explores the sector’s turnaround, its measurable social impact, and how private capital can help address a 27,000-home shortfall if supported by clearer regulation and policy backing.

Speaking on this week’s PropCast, in partnership with Property Week, Davies explains how Bloom was formed, why ultra-urban warehousing is fundamentally different from traditional last-mile logistics and why specialism matters more than ever in today’s higher-for-longer interest rate environment.

In the latest PropCast in association with Property Week, Lee Coward, Head of European Investments at Oxford Properties, joins Andrew Teacher to discuss the redevelopment of the London Stock Exchange building, Oxford’s expansion across Europe and Australia, and what today’s capital markets really mean for real estate investors.