Lockdown diaries: GAA’s David Woodward

David Woodward is the chief executive of Global Apartment Advisors. He has worked in build-to-rent for more than 25 years and was previously the global head of multifamily at Brookfield. He shares a day on 5 November from the US, working across time zones in the wake of the presidential election. Today is Thursday, but it’s not just any Thursday, it’s the Thursday after the presidential election and we are camped out at our Colorado home. I never work with the TV on, but for the past few days it’s been on the news 24/7 as I watch the twists and turns in this critical election. Every meeting starts with some discussion about the election, which way it is heading and what the mood is in America. It looks like we’ll be having a change of leadership, and there seems to be combined emotions of relief, uncertainty and nervousness about how the next few weeks are going to unfold. Today, like most days, kicks off with a video conference call at 5am. Being thrown into the thick of it in front of that laptop camera and having to be switched on as business is conducted across different time zones is clearly becoming my version of the new normal. Let’s just say I’m getting good at working the coffee machine before the sun rises! The two hours before the family wakes up always runs out fast, and at 7am a crash through my “office door” from both children marks breakfast time. It’s now been more than three years since we moved from the US to the UK and, while we love London, we’ve been able to maintain our routine of returning to Colorado every summer for a couple of months. We decided that if we had to be in some form of lockdown, we might as well be here, with lots more space and a big back yard for the kids, as I work from GAA’s Denver office. The removal of overseas travel and being able to visit clients in person has been a frustration. Real estate is about relationships, but also the physical built environment. We have a stack of sites to visit as soon as we can travel more regularly. Yet, Covid-19 has equally offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend more time with my family. After navigating that long commute from the kitchen to the home office that now dominates our lives, I turn my attention to client workstreams, getting into more of the detail, which I love. We have just drafted a 150-page business plan for building a property management platform for a European client and we’re on the final review. Detailing the nuances of local qualifications and training, the rental listing websites and providing detailed feedback on how revenue management can be so critical. But we also were able to set the scene and stress the importance of the opco team culture. Another major consideration is how Covid-19 will change BTR sectors globally. We have spent a lot of time working with clients on reimagining schemes, from how the units are designed and how the common areas will flow to how amenities will be accessed and utilised. The pandemic really is changing how many of our clients are thinking about BTR investing and the viability of different types of schemes and previously less obvious locations. As the caffeine wears off, Europe shuts down for the evening, offering time for lunch and a little respite. I reconnect with the London team before they call it a day. Then I switch gears with a catch-up with some old contacts from the US multifamily sector who have moved on to single-family rental housing. It is fascinating to hear about how tech and best practices have evolved in that space in the US. Since I founded GAA five years ago, a recurring question from old colleagues has been: how can multifamily housing genuinely not exist elsewhere? Thankfully for us, it still doesn’t, albeit the UK is now making good progress. With Covid-19, a whole new twist has been introduced which will impact the design and operations of rental housing into the future. What we do is not static; rather it is quite dynamic and changing all of the time. It’s 2pm here, which means 8am the next day in Sydney. I pick up with the Australia team on a capital raising instruction for a scheme in one of the large cities there. The BTR sector is just starting to take off in Australia and New Zealand. It’s about five years behind the UK, so the type of work we’re doing here is quite different and more focused on the early days of BTR, with more fundraising and design. With 4pm arriving, the decibel level in the house jumps. The kids are back from school and off to sports or play dates with friends. There is a flurry of activity at the house for an hour or so and then a little more quiet. I have a chance to check in with my wife and see how her day has gone and what the plan is for the rest of the evening. Given Covid-19, that usually means dinner at home and maybe a movie with the kids after they finish their homework, if we have time. At 7.30pm everyone gets ready for bed – pyjamas and bedtime stories. The kids are crashed by 8pm, and my wife and I are not that far behind them. I watch a little more of the election coverage on TV, and it’s looking even more like we’ll have a change in administrations. It’s hard to turn off the TV so I stay up way too late and finally fade off to sleep. Photo: GAA