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As the industry-leader in Build To Rent single-family home portfolio management, we have unrivalled experience and expertise in the sector. It means you can trust us to manage products from start to finish.
Years of experience and expertise in single-family homes has given us the expertise to understand what works from a build and design perspective. It means we can assist in ensuring the best possible product is built for the target audience and their living needs.
With 10,500+ properties under management, we’ve completed our fair share of handovers. We know how to ensure properties are handed over to an exacting specification, giving clients peace of mind that their assets are taken care of, and ensuring residents are moving into quality homes. It’s the first step in establishing a positive landlord-resident relationship.
We produce a detailed snagging report to ensure the developer has handed the property over in the appropriate condition. If there’s anything outstanding, we communicate directly with developers to ensure issues are rectified and handled within the all-important warranty period.
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Our Marketing team works alongside your brand to create a well-executed customer journey from start to finish. We create bespoke marketing strategies to enhance and advertise your properties and developments through our website, main property portals and other channels. Backed by years of expertise in this sector, we can work with you to build up your portfolio’s BTR brand and facilitate community-building initiatives.
As well as having the option to use the Ascend brand, we can also white-label portfolio teams to act as your brand throughout all touchpoints with residents, facilitating a fully streamlined customer experience. The white-labelling goes further than the team itself and can also include branded systems, property listings, emails, vehicles and other marketing literature.
With activities such as on-site events, regular competitions, affiliate offers, and bespoke resident portals/apps, many residents appreciate the added-extras, and we can help support your plans with this. Not only does this help encourage residents to buy into the BTR product, it can help nurture loyal and long-term customers.
Creating a sense of community in a development or scheme is about more than just properties. Management and ongoing stakeholder relationships are also key in attracting new residents and retaining them. Regular customer satisfaction surveys help to ensure the portfolio is always on the right track and make changes wherever needed.
On one of the BTR brands we manage, 96% of respondents would recommend the brand to their friends, family or colleagues.
We will take the time to understand the overall positioning for the portfolio and establish the USPs of each development. This allows us to form a plan of action, all whilst ensuring rents are healthy for the area and property type. Using state-of-the-art communication systems, we reach prospective residents via multiple platforms to ensure maximum coverage.
We’ve made significant investments in our IT Development team to create our own resident onboarding app, which allows for a seamless and efficient automated journey for customers from application to move-in.
Our app streamlines the application process and collects crucial information, including affordability and compliance requirements, and can automatically process the relevant pre-tenancy payments, resulting in minimal delays from enquiry through to move-in. This proprietary proptech supports our high occupancy rate of 99% on average across all portfolios.
Our in-house referencing team takes charge of the application process and becomes the applicant’s main point of contact. Through our system integrations, our third-party referencing partner delivers swift, high-grade checks to proceed with the move-in stage. We work closely with this provider to ensure a suitable match between the resident and the property.
Once the resident passes referencing, we’ll deliver the good news, collect the relevant funds and arrange every aspect of the move, including a full move-in pack. We can connect residents with a third-party co-branded digital home move assistant, helping them to set up their essential home services and utilities.
In addition, we can facilitate bespoke branded welcome boxes to be delivered to all new move-ins, setting the tone for their experience to come as a BTR resident.
Each of our BTR client portfolios is assigned a dedicated property management team, and we can manage funds of all sizes. We can even white-label our teams to become an extension of your BTR brand, ensuring consistency and a smooth customer journey from application to tenancy management.
Residents can be allocated a dedicated Property Manager who will be their single point of contact throughout the lifetime of their tenancy, further bolstering the relationship between landlord and customer.
In addition to our BTR services, we provide comprehensive Block Management support through our partnership with a leading UK specialist. With their expertise, we ensure a seamless and compliant experience for customers, maintaining the safety and security of any apartment blocks within a portfolio.
Our Accounts and IT Development teams work together to reduce arrears and improve financial reporting for our BTR funds. We’ve also developed a bespoke arrears system to automatically chase late payments via email, SMS and letter, with differing levels of communication depending on the case, and phone calls from our credit control team. For additional rental security, we can offer Rent Guarantee & Legal Cover to ensure your income is protected.
We have a 99.3% average rent collection rate across all of our BTR single-family home portfolios!
Regular communication, a friendly approach, and prompt remarketing of properties help us build strong relationships with our residents and minimize rental void periods. We conduct extensive checkout inspections and manage bills between tenancies to ensure a smooth transition. With an automated renewal system and healthy rental increases across the board, we consistently increase the revenue and ROI for portfolios.
Ascend is proud to have our own internal maintenance division, including in-house operatives, engineers and cleaners.
We operate a seamless system for large scale BTR maintenance reporting. Our in-house maintenance controllers strive to achieve the best value on any works that are raised, as well as ensuring properties always remain fully compliant. We utilise our internal team wherever possible so you can benefit from these cost savings, but an additional suite of contractors in key locations is also available for swift processing of works.
Each asset we manage has its own branded account on our online repair reporting software. This customised platform not only provides clear and concise maintenance breakdowns, but also enhances the customer journey and enables a consistent experience.
Over 47% of maintenance issues initially raised by our BTR residents were closed without turning into a full maintenance request.
We’re proud members of the following organisations and accreditations:
We pride ourselves in treating your assets as our own. As such, we complete regular property inspections and extensive reports to ensure properties are being kept at the standards we’d expect.
Efficiently coordinated via our bespoke diary system at various points throughout a tenancy, each report is allocated a rating. We then work with residents in properties where standards have slipped to educate on areas for improvement, with an aim for this to reduce the turnaround time between tenancies.
We also offer virtual property inspections on our SFBTR client portfolios, which allows inspections to take place without the need of physical attendance. Since roll-out, this has resulted in a more efficient workflow, reduced carbon emissions, and a better level of trust and loyalty from our residents.
Having a consistent on-site presence is key when managing BTR developments.
We have external teams dedicated to the portfolios we manage who are able to represent the brand on-site and make sure everything is looking as it should.
With monthly visits to every development, we inspect all external areas and ensure they’re being maintained to a high standard, all documented in a full site report. We use this time to check on-site signage, roads, pathways, property renderings and any communal areas.
It’s also a great opportunity to see how residents are using the open spaces and external areas to assess any room for improvement.
Ascend has made huge investments into technology development and innovation in the past few years, and has its own internal IT development team. With proprietary proptech that cannot be purchased off-the-shelf, we have created an unrivalled Build to Rent asset management model that’s capable of managing large-scale portfolios across the UK.
Our systems cover the entire journey, including property applications, inspections, communications, arrears, maintenance, renewals, re-lets and end of tenancy processes.
The automations we have in place across this journey ensure efficiency and a watertight service. This, along with our expert team, results in cost-savings for the client, increased rents, minimised voids, and a high customer satisfaction rate.
At Ascend, we aim for maximum asset optimisation by considering the whole picture from start to finish. Our focus is on achieving substantial financial returns for clients and delivering excellent standards of service for customers. We set and consistently report on KPIs, and provide detailed breakdowns of the asset structure.
As well as KPI reporting, we offer customised reports for BTR clients, available weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. As a tech-driven property company, we have extensive data at our disposal. We’re keen to help you translate that into everything from strong financial reports to accurate forecasting.
From managing assets to optimising occupancy, our client case studies are testament to our expertise in BTR single-family home portfolio management.
See our case studies
If you’re looking to invest, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll talk you through exactly what we can bring to your project.
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