Our strategy
Our strategy: to become the UK’s leading developer, manager and owner of retirement developments
Our purpose: to champion the role, wellbeing and happiness of older people in society
Our vision: to create communities for our customers that nurture a sense of belonging, independence and peace of mind
Our mission: to be the natural choice for later living - by developing beautiful, sustainable and more affordable places to live, with flexible services and a choice of ownership options, designed around our customers and their families.
Our strategy is underpinned by three key principles:
- Flexibility within our care and support services to respond to customer needs.
- Choice of ownership through multi-tenure options, including rental and shared ownership
- Affordability of our property prices to ensure we have a broad appeal.
The impact of the pandemic
We are thankful that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was limited within our communities. This reaffirmed that we have the right long term strategy to support our customers. We will continue to improve our customer experience by offering a choice of tenure and a range of services that meet their needs.
Unlocking strategic opportunities
We aim to:
- Increase ROCE (Return on capital employed)
- Increase market penetration
- Find new revenue streams
- Reduce cyclicality
Using our three key principles:
- Flexibility
We will increase the flexibility of our services to respond to evolving customer needs. This will include the introduction of a new tiered service for new and existing customers, expanding our care offering, opening up new developments for wider community use and integrating technology enabled services (e.g. motion monitoring, medication control sensors and home automation) - Choice
We believe multi-tenure is a big opportunity and seek to introduce more rental and shared ownership opportunities. Our research reveals 50% of customers would be interested in a rental proposition. Importantly, as we enter the rental market, we will retain a part share in this while exploring opportunities to bring institutional investment, Real Estate Investment Trust (‘REIT’) funds and various other vehicles into this industry. Find out more about the launch of our rental investment fund in April 2021. - Affordability
The business seeks to maintain its mass market appeal by increasing the affordability of its products through reducing build costs, increasing efficiencies and introducing new contemporary and optimised apartment designs, incorporating, where appropriate, open plan living. We will achieve this through standardised designs that we will fabricate in a different way, ultimately reducing the average selling price and increasing the size of our addressable market.
We think there is a way of creating signature designs in this new space. It is an important part of the build cost reduction programme mentioned above, developing high quality, attractive developments using modern methods of construction (‘MMC’), to really accelerate both our build programmes and the roll out of these new initiatives. Find out more about the launch of our new partnership in December 2020 with Sigmat to roll out MMC across many of our developments.
Our business model
Our business model is built on five principles - each designed to provide the best products and services for our customers.
1. Targeted land buying
We target land based on different criteria to mainstream housebuilders:
- Centrally located brownfield sites
- Close to amenities
- Regenerating town centre sites
2. Effective planning and design
We have significant planning and design expertise:
- Specialist in-house planning team
- Strong reputation with local authorities
- Increased Government recognition of the benefits of our products
3. High-quality construction
We deliver high-quality buildings:
- Industry-leading quality and performance
- Experienced subcontractors and established supply chain
- Repeatable build process
4. Specialist sales and marketing
We have an industry-leading trusted brand:
- Specialist trained sales force
- Trusted brand - 40 years’ experience
- Dedicated customer service teams
5. Supportive property management and care services
We have a well-established management and care service:
- Dedicated in-house management services team
- House and Estate Management teams undertake day-to-day running of developments
- Provides added peace of mind for customers
- Ongoing service quality underpins McCarthy Stone’s brand