The Return: Property & Investment Podcast Anna Clare Harper

Send us a Text Message.I chatted with Elizabeth Froude, Group Chief Executive of Platform Housing Group, one of the largest Housing Associations in the Midlands with 49,000 homes as part of a collaboration with UKREiiF (The UK’s Real Estate and Infrastructure Forum).We talked about topics including:How to attract institutional capital to decarbonise existing social housing stock when the substantial upfront capital required doesn’t always result in higher rents (e.g. where rents are capped)Wh...

Send us a Text Message.I spoke to Gemma Bourne, Managing Director at Better Society Capital (formerly Big Society Capital) as part of a collaboration with UKREiiF (The UK’s Real Estate and Infrastructure Forum).We talked about topics including:Where the UK’s leading social impact investor gets its capital from, including dormant bank accounts What other organisations can learn from 10 years of impact investing, including how to avoid ‘impact blinkers’ that distract from thorough due dili...

Send us a Text Message.I chatted to Richard Donnell, Executive Director at Houseful which is the Business to Business part of Zoopla. We covered:Rent growth - at its lowest for 30 monthsThe supply-demand imbalance - which is still over 2 x pre-pandemic levels What investor opportunities exist in the current market - notably existing homes What the election means for the housing and rental marketsGuest website: https://houseful.co.uk/Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/r...

Send us a Text Message.I chatted to Jamie Broderick, Deputy Chair of the non-profit Impact Investing Institute about place-based impact investing - as part of a collaboration with UKREiiF (The UK’s Real Estate and Infrastructure Forum).We covered:What actually is impact investing, and what is place-based impact investing?Who is still investing in an environment of higher interest rates, and what do they want?Blended finance and the use of public funding to crowd in private capitalNet Zero Nei...

Send us a Text Message.I caught up with my friend Jon Daley, who I (not very) jokingly refer to as ‘the Martin Lewis of social and sustainable housing’ because he knows so much about these socially critical topics. He’s also Head of Sustainability at Asset Manager G2M.For context, Jon and I agree on a lot of things, including that the value of ideas shared increases exponentially, and that collective effort beyond building design is essential for achieving the environmental and social outcome...

Send us a Text Message.If you work in sustainable investing, you probably already know the ‘Bridges Spectrum of Capital’. I discovered and loved it when I was researching my book on Sustainable Residential Investing, so I was especially excited to chat with Michele Giddens OBE, Co-CEO of Bridges Fund Management, which she Co-Founded alongside Philip Newborough and Sir Ronald Cohen - who gets described as "the father of British venture capital".Michele has 30 years experience in sustainab...