Keith Osborne, editor of Show House magazine, speaks to Andrew Rinaldi, managing director of Antler Homes, to find out more about the company and its success at last year’s WhatHouse? Awards.
Please tell us a bit about yourself and Antler Homes.
I started my career in finance, trained as a Chartered Accountant, then worked for an investment bank living and working in several countries over this time. Taylor Wimpey hired me as their Corporate Development Director. My first job there was to sell the North American business, which was the final part of the Taylor Wimpey restructuring.
Then I was fortunate enough to be involved in a range of operational roles where I learned a tremendous amount. My experience ranged from Land Director in Devon and Cornwall to Construction Director and Technical Director in central London. I learned much about the business and wanted to do something a little different.
What brought you to Antler Homes?
A business associate and I decided to buy a housebuilder and in 2018, we raised some private equity money and bought Antler Homes. Antler Homes was then around 45-years-old, very design-led (as it still is) with a great brand and reputation. It had been a semi-national business with six offices delivering around 400 homes a year, but had downsized to one office delivering around twenty homes per year. We felt that it was a terrific platform to build from.
We have been very keen to remain true to Antler’s high-quality, design led heritage. Our focus has shifted to slightly larger sites – generally 25 to 75 homes. Geographically our developments are in high-quality commutable areas, within one hour of London, in areas where our customers want to live. Our average selling prices are generally in the £600,000 to £700,000 price range where we are proud to deliver high-quality family housing.
Our core customer base tend to be ‘right-sizers’ – upsizing or downsizing, it is a bit of both. Younger buyers looking for more room as they grow their family and older buyers looking for an easier, lower maintenance, future-proofed home. This development (St. Anne’s Meadows in Wokingham) ticks all the boxes in terms of location and we tend to have more younger buyers here on this development. This is perhaps a nod to the range of well performing schools and the desire to live in a highly sought-after market town with excellent commuter links.
We have had a couple of challenging years, as most have, which has slowed down our growth, but we remain optimistic about the future prospects for our business. I believe that the market will turn around at some point, and this combined with the undersupply of homes will be a great opportunity. We are losing some competitors due to the market softness and I would like Antler to well positioned to grow when the market turns.
Have you a time scale in mind about when things might change, would it rely on government?
Sadly none of us have a crystal ball but it still feels that the market will need the government stepping in to accelerate any improvement in the market which could otherwise take some time. There also remains the geopolitical risk which needs resolving as right now it has the ability to do a lot of damage.
In terms of the government stepping in, there has been much talk about ‘will they, won’t they’ on a ‘Help to Buy‘ type product. We are hearing rumours that the government knows they have to do something and they want to do it sooner rather than later. My personal view on Help to Buy or other first-time buyer stimulus is that it is madness not to be doing it right now – it has clearly worked very well for both the industry and the government in the past.
They have spent much time talking about planning with some big gains on large applications winning on appeal, however planning departments remain understaffed. Obtaining consents locally, clearance of planning conditions, receipt of highway and service approvals all remain challenging and an impediment to building new homes.
Even if we get receive all the consents we need, the next question is, who will build them? Because we clearly don’t have the resources, particularly in a post-Brexit world. To gear up, it is going to take time. The government has made some great announcements about skills initiatives and we all need to back these, but this is a significant challenge for our industry.
The final issue is that in today’s market we are struggling to sell all the homes we produce due to the weak sales market. In my time with Antler prior to the 2022 mini-Budget, we seldom held stock units, but now we are sitting on 25 stock units across four or five sites and for a small developer, it represents a significant amount of capital to have tied up. This is then compounded by a market where interest rates are a lot higher and we are debt funded with higher levels of finance required to support the increased level of WIP.
The government’s aspirations are excellent. I rate them highly for their desire and ambition but the results have not matched the aspiration.
Talking of resources and skills, how big is Antler now?
Two years ago we were building on nine sites, but we are now building on three with another soon to start. We need to work through this difficult market and then start growing again. We have 25 people on our payroll plus another 100 or so contractors and agency people on our sites.
In terms of skills, one of the things we have been very keen on is our partnership with Portsmouth University. We have sent six people through a programme where they attend university one day per week and work with us as trainee quantity surveyors and technical trainees. This has been a great success. We plan to expand it into other disciplines as well.
Was that an initiative that you started?
We started that in our first year as a new business to bring in some extra resources and Portsmouth University were keen to work with us. We have developed some great people through this programme – we could not be more pleased. It speaks to the quality of the trainees that they are willing to work that hard. It is not easy to do a degree while you’re working full-time.
There is much support nationally for doing more of this – the government and the HBF skills team are very supportive and would like to be doing more.
Were you at the WhatHouse? Awards ceremony last year?
This was the first year in ten that I have not attended. I was torn between this and the ability to be present for the first Ashes Test in Australia. Being a ‘cricket tragic’ I chose to head over there to Perth. Given that the test only lasted two days, I might have been able to get back in time if I had planned my trip better!
I was genuinely disappointed to miss it. Not just because we were recognised – and that is huge for us – but for me it is an exceptional day. In addition to the catching up with people and the networking opportunities, which I think are outstanding, I love seeing all the product being highlighted. It is incredibly interesting to see what people are doing and hear about evolving trends.
Antler Homes had won quite a few WhatHouse? Awards previously.
The new Antler has now won four awards – they have all been bronze, so we need to crack that nut somehow. We see WhatHouse? Awards as the pinnacle in our industry – these are the ones you want. You always like being recognised, but WhatHouse? Awards are THE awards.We have all of our plaques on display in our office entrance and we are all really proud of them.
As a small business, everybody enjoys the celebration and the recognition that they get. It also confirms that the business is doing all the right things.
From a marketing perspective, it is massive for us and we like to publicise them. The WhatHouse? team are really helpful on that end too.
The judges’ report praised your respect to the local vernacular.
It is all about differentiating ourselves from other homes, but particularly from some of our larger competitors. We want to build homes that people want to live in for a lifetime in areas they want to make their home. We want to build something that fits in with local vernacular and is additive to the local community. We like to leave a community looking better than it was when first acquired the land.
It is particularly pleasing on brownfield schemes such as one we are currently developing on the Hampshire/Dorset border, where a brownfield site was once an eyesore and we have remediated it into a beautiful 89-home scheme surrounding a feature lake. It has turned a blight on the local community into something really attractive that we can all be proud of. This is what we want our business to deliver.
Every development we do is different. We don’t want to be building the same product all over the country, but rather a range of homes that respond to local flavours.
Each development has its own specification, generally do you use the same supply chain?
It really depends on the development. We like to work with our subcontractors and suppliers as trusted partners who have a vested interest in our business and vice versa. If we succeed, they succeed, and we both grow together. So the more trusted partners we use, the better it is for our business.
We have some subcontractors that are working on this site [St. Anne’s Meadows] that have worked on many of our sites and they have really supported us, and hopefully they feel that we have done the same for them. This is most important as they are a big part of our success.
Another thing the judges picked up on was your customer service. Is this something that you identify as being exceptional compared to your competition?
There are a couple of things really. For us as a small business, we are only as good as the last house we sold. Customer service is everything for us. It is about the personal touch and taking pride in everything we do.
Just yesterday we received an email from one of our clients where there had been some issues and our customer was raving about our Head of Customer Care and how she had turned his situation from being one where he was concerned to where he is now absolutely thrilled with his new home. He was just singing her praises. There is no greater accolade we can receive than for our customers to write to us praising our team for a great job done that has delighted them.
How have you been adapting to quality standards and home search habits?
Much of the changes are incredibly positive for the industry and raising the quality of delivery throughout. We feel that we have already been exceeding these standards and now we need to be going one step further to stay ahead of current standards. Customers are certainly more demanding than they were when I first got into the industry. But our goal continues to be to delight them.
We are active on social media and drive good interest from it and our customers’ home search habits. We track what are spending, our conversion rates, our cost per lead alongside other key marketing KPIs. These are very important to us, particularly now in today’s tough market, where we have to be doing everything we can to maximise our reach, and then once customers make contact with us, it is then to make them stick.
How do you see the rest of this year going?
Unless there is some degree of government intervention, I think there will be continue to be challenges in the market. This year is an improvement over last year as there do seem to be a good amount of people out there looking to move, so it is about reaching them and educating them on why they want to move into an Antler home.
I am sometimes challenged that in a tough market we should be looking to reduce specification. And my answer is absolutely not. This is the time when we have to stand out from the crowd and ensure our homes are as desirable as possible.
We have to be showing people that buying an Antler home is different to buying from our competitors. The market is likely to remain challenging, but I feel there is enough demand for us to work with. In addition to product quality, it is also about incentives and other sales tools, being flexible and understanding what customers want and how we can best serve their needs.
What’s the secret of putting together a WhatHouse? Award-winning entry?
It is about really promoting what we see as our USPs, what makes us different and how we go the extra mile for our customers. It’s about getting the messaging right and being concise – you don’t want the messaging to get lost in the weeds.
We want to deliver an excellent submission and put a lot of effort into it, but all the while remembering that our core job is not winning awards. Our core job is delighting our customers and delivering beautiful homes and communities.
And when you talk about Antler itself, for me it is about staying true to our principles, making sure our people are motivated and feeling excited about working for our business and for our customers. Our people need to see the opportunities for the business and for themselves. These are the ingredients that we need to succeed.
