Urban Living Festival announces new venue, format, partners and awards for 2025

Join us for the fifth Urban Living Festival at Mary Ward House, close to the major urban regeneration projects at London’s King Cross, on September 2025.

DISCOVER MORE: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT URBAN LIVING IS HERE

keep-up-to-date with what's happening across the urban living landscape. discover what you need to know within Hotels, Extended Stay and Serviced apartments, Short term rentals, BTR, Flex Workspace, Coliving, Coworking and Later Living markets.

• 120 thought leading owner, developer, operator speakers;
• 275+ quality attendance
• 51 sessions to challenge your thinking and spark new ideas.
• 5 full day breakout streams; 1 main plenary room;
• unlocking the neighbourhood hosted property tours (limited places)
• tailored exhibitor room - this is not a boring trade show!
• host of the second Urban Living Impact Awards - no cost to enter, no limit on amount of entries: submissions open July 1st.

DAY ONE
Hosted 'unlocking the neighbourhood' property tours. Meet owners, developers and operators as they showcase their cutting-edge properties across the living and hospitality sectors.

Urban Living News' inaugural Urban Living Impact awards and drinks reception follow later in the evening.

Numerous opportunities to learn, network and do business whilst celebrating best practice in one of the largest urban regeneration areas of the UK.

DAY TWO CONFERENCE
In addition to the main stage conversation, join over 120 thought leading speakers within 5 dedicated break-out content streams which includes the latest 'must know' presentations, panels and debates covering BTR, PBSA, coliving, later living, flex workspace, hotels and hospitality, and short-term rentals.

ULF is partnering with leading trade associations across the various asset classes, with the ARL, IoH, STAA, The Class Foundation, ULI Europe and FlexSA already confirmed as supporting partners, and more to follow.

2025 will also host the second ever Urban Living Impact awards, a new initiative which celebrates people and projects which are leading the way in urban development.

George Sell, editor-in-chief at IHM, said: “I’m very excited about the changes and improvement to ULF. The new format gives us the opportunity to offer much more detailed and tightly focused content on the numerous asset classes we’ll be covering, and our partnerships with trade associations will ensure the agenda is of-the-minute, providing the opportunity to discuss the issues that really matter. The event will also provide exceptional networking and learning opportunities.”

“The new Urban Living Impact awards will shine a light on those who are truly excelling, delivering exemplar projects and initiatives across the asset classes,” he added.

SOME OF THE COMPANIES REPRESENTED AT 2024 URBAN LIVING FESTIVAL INCLUDE:-

Newdog PR, Lowy Group, Candour Properties, Toni K Associates, Cedar Capital Partners, Katten, This Is Fresh, PriceLabs, Canary Wharf Group, Vertus, Huckletree, likeMagic, City of London, IMS, Opago, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Roger Lewis, UKAA, Birchgrove, Tristan Capital Partners, res:harmonics, Corporate Housing Factory, Studio Moren, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Charles Hope Apartments, Opago, Montgomery Group, Assa Abloy Group, Your Apartment, Yays Group, Laundry Heap, Wifirst, Neil Davies Architects, Real Estate BNP Paribas, Gravity Co-living, AXA Investment Managers, SDDE Smith Group, Antonyslumbers.com, Viridian apartments, DP9, Mure Living, Vita Group, Integrity International Group, Well Studio Architecture, Lamington Group, Node Living, Fidelity International, Neil Davies Architects, Conscious Coliving, Reshape Living, KSL Capital, Legal & General Investment Management, Resicentral, Stay Leva, Yotel, ASK4 LTD, AND MORE

Changing demographics, social and economic drivers are fuelling investor decisions across broader Urban Living asset classes. The 'age of convergence' blended across hospitality and real estate is happening at pace as we emerge, re-set and focus on the future different.

ULF places the spotlight directly on investment, development, supply, operations, brands, distribution, technology and demand generators. Curated with an intense focus on collaboration and debate, the festival brings CEO’s, ‘best of breed’ speakers and attendees, sponsors and solution providers to collectively share best practice, network, map the industry’s future and do business within: 

STAY

• Hotels and serviced apartments
• Aparthotels / extended stay hotels
• Hostels
• Short-term rentals

LIVE

• Co-living
• Build-to-rent (BTR) and student accommodation
• Senior living

WORK

• The future of the office
• Co-working
• Sustainable Buildings
• PropTech

The market

Investment in the UK living sector totalled £12.6 billion in 2023 – a 30 per cent fall on record levels of activity in 2022*****

 

BTR
• £300 billion is needed to meet the future household growth requirements, of an additional million homes in the Private Rented Sector by 2031*

• Of the c.£20 billion invested between 2018 and 2023, just over a fifth has been deployed to purchase fully let operational stock.

• Over the next decade, £20 billion will be deployed into the operational BTR space.

• SFR accounted for more than 40 per cent of UK BTR investment in 2023

PBSA
• The demand for student accommodation in the UK stands at 1,489,110 students**

• The national average student-to-bed ratio is 2.1:1, emphasising the continued need for additional accommodation.

• The UK's PBSA sector observed a significant boom in investment, reaching £1.7 billion in the first half of the year. It represents an extraordinary 245 per cent growth against last year's period***

• Q2 2023 was exceptionally interesting, with a massive £1.3 billion invested in the sector. These statistics indicate a 256 per cent year-on-year rise. This reflects the sector's high margins and rising demand from investors seeking secure, long-term returns in UK student housing investment.

 

Coliving
• There was a 65 per cent increase in new beds delivered in 2023 compared to the previous year. This brings the total number of operational coliving homes in the UK to 7,540, representing a fivefold increase since 2019****

• Investor appetite for coliving has been robust, with nearly £1 billion spent on acquiring or funding coliving developments since 2020.

 

Later living
• CBRE estimates that there is an undersupply of 614,000 senior living units across the UK.

 

Hospitality
• There was £2 billion of UK hotel transactions in 2023 with Q4 the most active quarter. Overseas investors represented 39 per cent of deal volume****

 

Workspace
• More than half of UK landlords are planning to develop additional flexible workspace across their portfolios, according to research from the Instant Group, with more than three-quarters experiencing increased demand for this type of space in the past year.

 

Short-term rentals
• The global short-term vacation rental market size was estimated at USD 109.76 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2 per cent from 2023 to 2030******

*Savills

**Cushman & Wakefield

***BNP Paribas Real Estate

****Knight Frank

*****JLL

******Grand View Research

 

Hosted over two days, London will have the opportunity to showcase its status as a “living and breathing” world-class metropolitan hub for real estate investors, developers, owners and operators.

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