LOFT Furnishes the Rental Living Summit, Manchester
By Benjamin Hall, Founder, LOFT
On Thursday 16th July, Property Week brings the Rental Living Summit to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, and LOFT is furnishing the event as official furnishing partner. Afterwards, we're co-hosting the Building Connections networking drinks with Chapman Taylor and JLL at Mollie's.
We didn't sign up for a logo on a lanyard. We signed up because of where this event is happening, and what that city has come to represent for the rental living sector.
Manchester didn't follow Build to Rent. It built the model.
Build to Rent in the UK didn't start as a policy idea handed down from Westminster. It started in cities with the population growth, graduate retention and regeneration to make large-scale purpose-built rental viable, and Manchester led that shift first. The numbers show it's still leading now, not coasting on an early lead. Deloitte's latest Crane Survey puts around 5,500 residential units on course to complete in Manchester in 2026, the second-highest annual total since the survey began, with a further 15,332 homes now holding planning permission. Deloitte's own conclusion is blunt: Manchester has one of the strongest residential supply positions of any UK city outside London.
That local strength sits inside a national build to Rent market that's still growing despite tighter capital conditions. UK BTR completions rose by more than 13% in 2025, with investment forecast to exceed £5.7 billion in 2026, and separate planning data shows 621 active BTR schemes progressing through UK planning, representing roughly 134,800 homes, with Manchester now established as one of the sector's core regional markets alongside Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds. On the demand side, Manchester was ranked the best UK city for renters in 2025, with 62% of households renting and tenant satisfaction running at 73%, and JLL is projecting 17% cumulative rental growth for the city by 2029. Average private rents reached £1,349 a month in April 2026, with letting periods averaging just 25 days in mid-2025 - a sign of a rental market where supply still hasn't caught up with demand, whatever the headline numbers suggest.
Those figures are exactly the kind of thing this year's Summit agenda is built to interrogate, not just celebrate. The Oxford-style debate on residential development, the Trend Talk on tenant expectations rising faster than rents, and the closing panel on why operations rather than delivery will define the next cycle of returns all point to the same underlying question: growth on paper doesn't automatically become good rental housing on the ground. We've fitted out enough build to Rent, co-living and single family rental schemes in this city over 23 years to know that's the harder, more interesting problem.
Why thought leadership matters more in this sector than most.
Rental living is not a mature, settled market. Regulation is moving fast, most recently with the Renters' Rights Act reshaping how operators think about compliance, tenancies and income protection. Capital is more disciplined than it was two years ago, which means the operators winning allocation now are the ones who can evidence a well-run, durable asset, not just good design at handover. None of that gets solved by any one company working alone in its own silo. It gets solved by investors, developers, operators and suppliers being in the same room, saying what's actually working and what isn't, in public, on the record. That's the value an event like the Rental Living Summit brings, and it's why we think it's worth LOFT's time, not just our sponsorship budget, to be there and to keep writing about it afterwards.
What People First Design actually means for a BTR scheme.
LOFT was founded on a simple principle: People First Design. It's easy to write on a slide. It's harder to hold to when you're specifying furniture for hundreds of units on a tight programme, so in practice it comes down to three things.
Durability that respects the tenant, not just the budget, is the first. BTR furniture gets used harder and longer than furniture in a typical home sale, and it has to survive multiple tenancies without looking tired on the first viewing of the second let. Specifying for that reality, rather than for the render, is a design decision as much as a procurement one.
A lifecycle, not a delivery, is the second. We describe our proposition as Delivered, Assembled, Installed, Removed, Replaced, Recycled, and that's deliberate. A scheme's FF&E needs aren't a single order, they're an ongoing relationship across the asset's life, from initial fit-out through to replacement cycles and eventual end-of-life. Operators managing thousands of units across a portfolio need a furnishing partner who thinks in those terms, not just in single-scheme invoices.
Sustainability that's measured, not claimed, is the third. We hold ISO 9001 and ISO 14001:2015 certification, we're ESGmark® assessed, and we divert 98–99% of waste from landfill across our operations. For operators under growing pressure to evidence ESG credentials to investors and lenders, not just describe them, that measurable track record matters as much as the furniture itself.
Put together, People First Design is our answer to a question every build to Rent operator is now asking under a different name: how do you build an asset that performs financially over ten or twenty years, not just looks good at launch? Comfortable, durable, well-considered interiors are part of that answer. They shape tenant retention, reduce turnover costs, and support the pricing power operators need in a market where tenant expectations are rising faster than rents.
What LOFT is bringing to the day.
As furnishing partner, we're supplying the FF&E that shapes how the Summit itself looks and feels, a small but deliberate example of People First Design applied to a one-day event rather than a 300-unit scheme: comfortable, considered spaces that work for the people using them, not just for a photograph. Our team will be on the ground throughout the day, and in the evening we're co-hosting Building Connections with Chapman Taylor and JLL at Mollie's, Studio IV, Manchester, from 5 to 8pm. No agenda, no pitch decks, just drinks and conversation with the people shaping BTR, co-living and single family rental across the UK.
If you're an investor, operator, developer or consultant working in rental living, we'd genuinely like to see you there, at the Summit and afterwards. This is our sector, in our city, and we think events like this are how it keeps getting better, one honest conversation at a time.
