TL;DR
- Alexander Morari, MRICS, CEO of Shelton Reed, is in London for PropTech Connect Europe 2026 with a financing lens on the question the UK housing market keeps asking: can technology deliver better homes faster?
- His answer reframes it. Viability is decided by the cost of capital and by what a lender and an insurer will underwrite, not by what the software can do.
- The one technology thesis he backs: a verified digital record of a building is becoming part of its security package, and that is where quality starts paying for itself.
Why London, why this question
Q: You advise on capital, not construction. Why spend the week at a technology conference about building homes?
Because the technology is where the money is going, and the money is what I advise on. Shelton Reed works principal to principal with developers, investors and lenders across Europe on financing and capital raising. Every conversation I have with a lender about a residential scheme ends up at the same three questions: will it fund, will it sell, and at what cost of capital. This conference is where the people building the tools meet the people who have to make those three answers work, which is why I am here. What the money itself is doing in the UK this year is set out in the UK capital backdrop.
The word "viability"
Q: "Viability" is the word on every UK housing panel this autumn. What does it mean to you?
To a housebuilder it means build cost against sales value, and that gap is real. Build costs in England rose 21.8% between the third quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2025, while sales values rose 13.1%. The Home Builders Federation puts the policy cost added to a new home over five years at around £76,000. Those are honest numbers.
To me viability means something narrower and more decisive: the cost of capital. A move of 150 basis points in debt pricing does more damage to an appraisal than any software licence saves. So when a vendor tells the room its platform improves viability, my first question is which line of the appraisal it moves, and whether the bank's credit committee will believe it.
The modular lesson
Q: The UK's biggest bet on "faster" was modular housing. It collapsed. What did that teach you?
That the factory was never the problem. Ilke Homes, L&G Modular and the modular arm of Urban Splash all went, and the count is around 4,289 homes stalled by insolvency and nine manufacturers gone. The engineering mostly worked. What did not work was the financing chain around it. Lenders wanted a track record the sector did not yet have, warranty providers were slow to accept new systems, and once a manufacturer failed there was no second supplier to step in and finish the modules.
The lesson for every technology company in this building is the same: if a lender will not fund it and an insurer will not warrant it, no amount of software makes it viable. Speed the bank cannot underwrite is not speed, it is risk. How that gap between a good pilot and a bankable product plays out across the sector is the subject of From pilots to performance.
Quality as collateral
Q: So is there any technology you actually believe changes the financing?
One, and it is not glamorous. The Building Safety Act made a digital golden thread a legal requirement for higher-risk buildings, and the market is now doing something the regulator never wrote down: lenders and buyers are asking for it in due diligence on refinancings and disposals, including on buildings the Act does not strictly cover. A building with a complete, verified digital record refinances more easily and sells to an institution more easily. One without it takes a haircut in negotiation or a delay in diligence.
Quality becomes collateral, and that is the strongest business case for "quality" technology I can see, and it is a financing point rather than a construction point. Anyone selling software for the development lifecycle should be able to show how their data ends up in the security package, not just on a dashboard. AI across the lifecycle looks at how far that data actually travels today.
The deadline in the room
Q: The Future Homes Standard has slipped to 2028. Does that take the pressure off?
No. The real deadline in this room is 1 October 2026, when the Building Safety Levy goes live in England. Every developer here is pushing schemes through building control in the next three weeks. The Future Homes Standard matters, but 2028 is a planning horizon. The levy is a cash event. So anyone selling "future-ready" should say which standard they are building to: the one that costs money next month, or the one that costs money in two years.
The regulator is moving, to be fair. Gateway 2 approval times have come down from around 37 weeks to 12 on new cases. But 143,110 completions in the latest year is the lowest since 2015/16, against a government target of 1.5 million over the parliament. The system is still slow at exactly the point where speed would matter most.
The control group
Q: You run a European firm. Is there a market that already builds faster, and what does it cost?
Warsaw. The city completed 20,038 dwellings in 2025 with a fraction of London's planning apparatus, and developers there build fast with far less process. The trade-off shows in the product: less quality assurance, less documentation, less of the golden thread that London is now learning to price. Warsaw is the live control group for "faster versus better", and the honest conclusion is that the UK does not want that trade.
Which means "faster" in London cannot come from deregulation. It has to come from compressing the process: fewer handoffs, cleaner data, decisions that the bank can act on sooner. That is a better pitch for technology in this market than the one usually made.
How Shelton Reed engages
Q: Where does a firm like yours sit in all this?
Between the principal who owns the scheme and the principal who funds it. Every Shelton Reed mandate runs `P<SR>P`, Principal to Shelton Reed to Principal, which means we sit opposite the person who can say yes rather than three layers of advisers away from them. We are pan-European by design, because the capital that funds UK housing increasingly comes from outside the UK, and the capital looking at Warsaw or Frankfurt often starts its search in London. The corridor this edition traces to the Gulf, in The Europe & Gulf bridge, is one end of that map. The other end is the credit committee. Technology that helps both ends agree is technology I will back.
<!-- SOURCES
- Alexander Morari, MRICS, CEO of Shelton Reed; member of ULI: https://pl.linkedin.com/in/alexandermorari ; https://www.sheltonreed.com/
- Build costs +21.8% (Q3 2021 to Q3 2025) vs sales values +13.1%; HBF policy cost around £76,000 per home: https://www.hbf.co.uk/research-insight/hbf-explains-viability/ ; https://www.buildnews.co.uk/rising-build-costs-and-planning-policy-pressures-threaten-housing-delivery-targets-viability-study-warns/
- MMC collapses (Ilke Homes, L&G Modular, Urban Splash), 4,289 homes stalled across 19 schemes, nine Category 1 manufacturers no longer trading (University of Leeds "Prefabs Sprouting" final report, https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/download/downloads/id/1011/final-report-prefabs-sprouting-project.pdf ): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613218.2026.2699790?af=R ; https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/518/built-environment-committee/news/199612/mmc-sector-may-continue-to-struggle-without-a-fresh-approach-from-the-government/
- Lender, warranty and second-supplier barriers to offsite housing: https://www.trowers.com/-/media/files/thought-leadership/funding-barriers-to-offsite-housing/th-modular-construction-report-final.pdf ; https://centreforlondon.org/reader/made-for-london/chapter-4/
- Golden thread as a legal requirement for higher-risk buildings: https://www.eddisons.com/insights/golden-thread-explained
- Lenders and buyers requesting golden-thread evidence in refinancing and transaction due diligence, including outside strict scope: https://www.withersworldwide.com/en-gb/insight/read/hotel-refinancing-key-construction-related-considerations ; https://www.rwkgoodman.com/info-hub/biz-const-transactions-and-due-diligence-navigating-the-building-safety-act-2022/
- Building Safety Levy live 1 October 2026: https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com/en/insights/expert-insights/real-estate/2025/building-safety-lookahead-2026-will-see-the-reform-of-the-bsr-introduction-of-the-building-safety-levy-and-more/
- Future Homes Standard published 24 March 2026, in force 2027, full compliance 2028: https://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/green-mortgages/2026/03/24/future-homes-standard-implementation-delayed-until-2028/ ; https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/future-homes-and-buildings-standards-set-in-england
- Gateway 2 approval times 37 weeks to 12 on new cases: https://www.dlapiper.com/en-gb/insights/publications/2026/03/uk-top-5-most-significant-legislative-changes-regulatory-developments-or-trends-affecting
- 143,110 completions, lowest since 2015/16; 1.5 million homes target: https://fullfact.org/government-tracker/1-5-million-homes/ ; https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/government/rayner-keeps-1-5-million-home-target-despite-mounting-challenges-24-07-2026/
- Warsaw: 20,038 dwellings completed in 2025 (Statistical Office in Warszawa, "Budownictwo mieszkaniowe w Warszawie w 2025 r.", data file): https://warszawa.stat.gov.pl/opracowania-biezace/informacje-okolicznosciowe/inne-/budownictwo-mieszkaniowe-w-warszawie-w-2025-r-,111,24.html
- NOTE: answers drafted from the subject's panel preparation notes and the SR public positioning; approved by Alexander Morari on 2026-09-12 without edits. Do not assert any speaking slot at the event unless the organiser publishes it.
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