DFT took a look around the development alongside James Saunders, CEO at Quintain, the firm which brought BTR to Wembley.

The multi-asset site contains thousands of residential units as well as commercial spaces, such as restaurants, a food hall, supermarkets, and a retail centre alongside essential infrastructure such as a GP surgery, dentist, nursery and pharmacy, while for those with a taste of the arts, a theatre currently shows Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express.

“What was wrong with Wembley back in the day was it was just boom or bust, it was event day or nothing,” said James.

“When we bought the site, there was one janitor …who was the only person that lived on this 86 acres here.”

The mixed-use site now has around 5,000 homes ,of which 3,600 were BTR, once fully completed, Wembley Park is set to contain 6,000 BTR homes.

Despite Quintain originally starting the venture with a for sale asset in 2008, since 2015, the firm’s residential projects have solely consisted of  BTR.

James explained that one of the reasons the company made the decision to switch over to BTR due to the cyclicality of the for-sale marketplace, he admits that like other London developers, Quintain was dependent on the overseas market for sales, and the throughput of sales.

“There is a maximum amount from a single site you can sell through in a single year, it might be 30, 50 or 100 units. If you're doing regeneration on this scale, it's going to take you 30 years or 40 years to get through your residential.”

“What BTR offered us with the opportunity to actually deliver a lot more product faster.”

James said that through BTR Quintain was able to lease an entire block of around 400 units in around 12 to 18 months and have them occupied, with the developer able to offer fully furnished flats, with internet, enabling tenants to move in with minimal luggage: “We wanted the lights on community where people could move in straight away,” said James.

While Quintain has concentrated on its BTR, as well as the retail and leisure components, the area contains a series of for-sale assets built by other developers.

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Before being taken private in 2015 by a private equity firm, Quintain was a PLC and was unable to hold the assets as BTR, due to a lack of capital structure and was recycling capital too fast.

After the private equity firm came into the picture, capital support came with it allowing Quintain to build and retain its BTR assets.

That’s not to say that the scheme has not faced its difficulties which have come as part of a tougher economic climate over the recent years.

“We're now in a higher interest rate environment, which means that the debt that we use to build our buildings is more expensive.

“Construction costs are higher, labour costs are higher, so we, like every developer in London, are having to tweak the designs to make the schemes commercially viable, and we're also in a more intense regulatory environment than we've ever seen before,” explained James.

Quintain is not only the developer of the assets but also maintains the estate as a professional landlord.

Regulations such as the renter’s reform bill, which is in its second reading in the house of lords and looks to do away with fixed term tenancy, could complicate the tenancy management as it may be more difficult to judge how long people are staying for, according to James — In his view this could mean uncertainty for investors in the BTR market.

Despite economic uncertainty, he feels the market is ever evolving and Wembley Park is evolving with it, with 60% of tenancies being from overseas residents, elements such as Chinese supermarkets allow for the scheme to keep up to date with its occupants.

There is no doubt an appeal which comes with living within a stone’s throw from arguably the most iconic sports stadium in the UK, this did however bring some issues, not least for development during matchdays.

“We have an obligation to keep the streets open for the stadium, and the car parks open, so we had to work around that, which is one of the reasons it took us until 2018 to do the main arrivals point. We needed to have we had to do it in phases,” said James.

Matchdays bring essential footfall to the commercial elements of the park, as do its residents, however the development has been careful to ensure crowd management and barrier off the appropriate areas, meaning that while residents can be close to the action they can also retreat to normality.

With the full development set to finish over the next ten or so years, the scheme continues to grow with more BTR schemes set to rise up, allowing residents to live right next to the beating heart of English national football.