The Rental Living Summit Returns to Manchester: Why the BTR World Meets Here
This week, the UK's rental housing sector descended on Manchester. Property Week's Rental Living Summit returned for its second edition on 16 July at the Science and Industry Museum, with site visits around the city the day before — bringing together more than 250 property professionals: investors, developers, operators and the supply chain that keeps the sector's buildings running. Manchester Compliance was there.
Quick answer: The Rental Living Summit is Property Week's flagship rental housing conference, covering Build to Rent, co-living and single-family rental. The 2026 edition — the second — was held on 16 July 2026 at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester, with site visits on 15 July. The choice of host city is no accident: Manchester is the UK's largest Build to Rent market outside London.
What Is the Rental Living Summit?
The Rental Living Summit is Property Week's dedicated conference for the rental housing sector, replacing its former RESi360 and BTR360 events with a sharper focus on the living sectors that are actually growing: Build to Rent, co-living and single-family rental.
The first edition ran in Manchester in autumn 2025, with site visits to two of the city's flagship rental neighbourhoods — Capital&Centric and HBD's Kampus, and Get Living's New Maker Yards in Salford — and closed with the inaugural Rental Living Awards.
For 2026, the summit moves to the Science and Industry Museum in the heart of the city, a venue that suits the story: a monument to Manchester's industrial first act, hosting the industry building its residential second one.
Who Spoke in 2026
Speakers for the 2026 edition included:
- Adam Daniels — Chief Executive, Vistry Group
- Grace Oyesoro — Director of Operations, Quintain Living
- Thomasin Renshaw — Managing Director, UK Development, Greystar
That speaker list tells its own story about where the sector is heading. Vistry — one of the country's biggest housebuilders — now builds at scale for rental investors. Quintain runs Wembley Park, the UK's largest single-site BTR neighbourhood. And Greystar, the world's largest apartment operator, deepened its Manchester connection this year when it acquired Native Communities, the operator behind Kampus, bringing a 9,000-home managed portfolio and a Manchester-based operations team into the fold.
Why Manchester Hosts
There is a reason the UK's rental conference keeps choosing Manchester over London.
Manchester is the largest BTR market outside the capital. Centre for Cities research puts Manchester at 17% of the UK's entire Build to Rent stock — more than double Birmingham's 8% and second only to London. According to the Association for Rental Living, Greater Manchester's core (Manchester, Salford and Trafford) had 34 operational BTR schemes and more than 13,000 operational BTR homes by spring 2025, with thousands more under construction.
The skyline proves it. Deansgate Square, Angel Gardens, Kampus, New Victoria, New Maker Yards, Clippers Quay, Anaconda Cut, Cortland at Colliers Yard — Manchester and Salford have spent a decade building the neighbourhoods the rest of the country's BTR sector studies. The next generation is already topping out: Starlight Investments' Trinity Heights (60 storeys, 532 rental homes) and Vista River Gardens (55 storeys, 483 homes) both reached full height in the past year.
More than one in five new Manchester homes is BTR. Centre for Cities found that over the last five years, more than 20% of all new housing delivered in Manchester was Build to Rent — a share matched only by Leeds. In Manchester, BTR is not a niche within housebuilding. It is a substantial part of housebuilding.
The Themes That Dominated
Manchester Compliance works with Build to Rent operators, developers and managing agents across Greater Manchester — from communal EICR programmes across whole towers to emergency lighting, fire alarm testing and remedial works. Sector events like the summit matter to us because the conversations there set the operational agenda for the buildings we test and maintain.
The themes running through this year's conversations:
The construction slowdown. Nationally, BTR starts fell 65% in the year to Q1 2026, with Building Safety Act gateway approvals slowing high-rise schemes across the country. How the sector keeps its pipeline moving — and what that means for the buildings already operating — is the question of the year.
Operations as the differentiator. With fewer new towers breaking ground, the competitive battleground shifts to running existing buildings brilliantly: resident experience, retention, service charges — and the compliance operations that sit underneath all of it.
Single-family rental's rise. SFR investment overtook multifamily for the first time in 2025. The North West is home to more completed single-family rental homes than any other region, and Manchester-based Ascend manages the largest share of the national portfolio.
First-generation BTR growing up. Manchester's earliest BTR towers are now five, six, seven years old. First-cycle EICRs, ageing emergency lighting batteries, EV charging retrofits — the sector's maintenance and compliance era has properly begun.
The Bigger Picture
The summit landed at a fascinating moment. UK BTR investment hit a record £5.3bn in 2025 (Savills), and the first half of 2026 has already seen around £3bn transacted — including the largest operational BTR deal ever recorded. Capital is flowing into operational rental housing at record levels, at exactly the moment new construction has slowed sharply.
For Manchester, that means the buildings already standing — and the people who run them — matter more than ever. That is the conversation the Rental Living Summit exists to have, and there is nowhere more fitting to have it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Rental Living Summit?
Property Week's annual conference for the UK rental housing sector, covering Build to Rent, co-living and single-family rental. It replaced the former RESi360 and BTR360 events. The second edition took place on 16 July 2026 at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester, with site visits on 15 July.
Who attends the Rental Living Summit?
More than 250 property professionals — institutional investors, developers, operators, property managers and the sector's supply chain. 2026 speakers included leaders from Vistry Group, Quintain Living and Greystar.
Why is the summit held in Manchester rather than London?
Manchester is the UK's largest Build to Rent market outside London, holding around 17% of national BTR stock (Centre for Cities). With more than 13,000 operational BTR homes in its core and landmark schemes from Deansgate Square to New Maker Yards, it is the natural home for the sector's national gathering.
What does the summit mean for BTR building operations?
The sector conversation is shifting from development to operations — resident experience, retention and compliance. With construction starts down 65% nationally, running existing buildings well (including electrical safety, emergency lighting and fire alarm compliance) is where operators now compete.