House prices are spiralling, key workers can't afford to pay market rents or buy homes near their workplaces and developers are keener to build luxury apartments or grandiose "executive homes" in the commuter belt than affordable family homes in the inner city. But people on modest incomes have to live somewhere. Enter the local housing association.
Housing associations have become big business since the slashing of local council building programmes began in the 1980s and now the vast majority of new affordable properties across the country are built and/or owned by housing associations.
Finding suitable sites for building and existing properties for renovation, liaising with speculative developers, getting planning permission and managing building contracts are not jobs for the faint hearted and housing associations now employ highly qualified people with sophisticated blends of skills to manage multimillion pound programmes.
As director of development and new initiatives at Shepherds Bush Housing Association in west London, Michael Nestor currently has 24 schemes on the go, with development programmes with a value of about £75m. Shepherds Bush HA operates in some of London's most expensive boroughs, including Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Ealing and Richmond, where steep price rises have hit the less well off hard.
But speculative developers are coming under increasing pressure from planners and the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, to designate as "affordable" up to 50% of properties in new developments. This creates big opportunities for housing associations like Shepherds Bush, which manage the affordable properties for rent or sell them under low cost shared ownership schemes.
Identifying such opportunities is a key part of Mr Nestor's work. "We do a lot of work finding sites, which means talking to agents, following up leads or even just walking around," he says. "Then we commission a feasibility study and put together an offer."
If the association is working with a private developer building speculative housing, Mr Nestor is responsible for forming a good relationship with the developer and putting together what is known in the property industry as a section 106 deal. Under such a deal private developers agree to fund social housing or other community facilities, such as landscaping or the provision of a community centre, as a condition of getting planning permission.
This is just the beginning of a long haul. Once an offer for a site has been accepted, Mr Nestor and his seven colleagues in the development department have to deliver the proposed programme, which includes checking the site's title, dealing with planners, drawing up building specifications and putting the construction work out to tender.
The complexity of programmes varies enormously, says Mr Nestor. At one end of the scale, he's handling a contract for just £30,000 to refurbish an existing property. At the other, he's managing the purchase of over 100 street properties with a value of £18.5m and the demolition of a nine-storey block of flats in Fulham, which will be replaced by 23 family homes at a cost of more than £2m.
One of the most vital skills for a housing association development director is to understand and exploit a plethora of sources of funding. Grants from central government through the housing corporation have dwindled steadily over the past few years, leaving housing associations to plug the gap with private mortgage funding, income from rents on other properties, sales of properties outright or through shared ownership schemes or grants from local authorities.
There's fierce competition between housing associations for sites and funding, which is why development directors need to be knowledgeable about sources of funds and adept at using spreadsheets to work out how to afford new schemes. Mr Nestor's early career experience as a computer consultant and software programmer proves very useful in his present job.
But Mr Nestor, 38, graduated from Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University) with a degree in humanities and was offered a job in computing by chance. "I didn't even know how to turn a computer on," he says.
He soon found out and later went on to work for himself as a consultant, signing up several housing associations as clients. "I thought they had a job worth doing and I applied for a housing association job through a recruitment agency." He rose through the ranks of the development departments of housing associations including Sovereign in Newbury and English Churches in London before joining Shepherds Bush in 1999.
"I enjoy the variety," he says. "There's no one way of doing this job. Some people are more aggressive, like sales people while others have a more cooperative style. But you've got to be comfortable talking to people, good at negotiating. You've also got to be good at writing, for reports and so on."
It's rare that people leave private sector property companies for a housing association, but says Mr Nestor, "the people who are good at this job have one foot in the private sector. They have to like doing deals and getting new business."
Expect to earn between £20,000 and £25,000 as a development officer, rising to £30,000-£40,000 for a development manager. New development directors can earn £50,000+.
Sample job advertisement - director of development and new initiatives
Salary: up to £65,000 per annum
Responsibilities:
· identifying new opportunities for developing and converting properties for affordable housing
· delivering building and planning programmes
· managing staff
· corporate management role at senior level
Key requirements:
· experience in property development and financial management and planning
· high level of computer literacy
· good interpersonal and report writing skills
· understanding of the roles of local authorities, speculative developers, central government and the role these bodies and others play in the politics of social housing.
