The Next Generation of Home
About BEE Group
We are a new type of real estate development company based on the latest advances in design, technology, industrialisation, sustainability, health and social development to deliver homes that contribute actively to tackle the main challenges we face in resilience, demographics, affordability, environment and future living needs.
We offer turnkey real estate construction services that includes design (architecture and engineering), procurement, manufacturing, construction and digital support for optimal property operation and maintenance.
We believe
we need to start building homes with the future in mind
In the last 50 years we have not changed much in the way we design and build our houses. Productivity in the construction industry has dropped more than 25% in the last 25 years and construction (together with mining industry) are responsible for 62% of all inflation since 2000. As a result, housing is becoming increasingly expensive, more than the average income has developed and so unaffordable for more and more people. Although high demand and consequently high prices from low supply seem a gold mine for construction industry, it is a situation that is not sustainable. Unaffordability and need for large-scale more stringent building energy performance are rapidly changing the market dynamics.
Housing is directly responsible for 35+% (and indirectly almost 50% if we include construction) of global CO2 emissions. Increasingly stringent EU regulations try to force construction industry and home owners to meet the ambition of carbon neutrality for Europe in 2050. We have only this decade until 2030 to implement a new approach to creating housing with no negative climate impact, but even better a regenerative impact.
We want to offer you as a home buyer the best option available: high performance houses that are designed to be part of a real home: affordable, healthy, generating more energy than needed and offering the basis for personal and environmental regeneration.
That’s why we are accelerating the introduction at scale of high-performance housing, designed and constructed to meet at least passive home standards. Through the developments of real estate projects we will be able to determine manufacturing and construction standards locally, thus helping the local economy to take a giant leap forward.
That’s why we will invest on top of the normal project environmental restoration measures, an extra 1% of the property value to offset and regenerate the impact we made and boost the feeling of being ‘home’.
Future of Housing
Six major challenges and our answers
ENVIRONMENT
Reducing consumption of natural resources
Building housing requires significant natural resources, which impacts ecosystems as the demand for resources increases. Construction waste and the impact of cities on natural habitats are also significant. Between 50-75 percent of all diminishing natural resources are used by the building industry, with a particular impact on forest habitats.
Forests provide significant ecosystem services to human communities, including fresh water, pollution control, and production of non-timber resources. Degradation of these habitats for building materials has the perverse effect of reducing ecosystem services that also support cities.
Our Answer
We believe that designing with nature in mind is the way forward. We will work with the supply chain towards low-waste manufacturing techniques, using responsibly grown natural materials. We will integrate a materials circularity dossier with every building according to the European Level(s) recommendations. Additionally we dedicate 1% of the building investment towards restoring nature in and/or around the building. If that is not an option, we will donate this 1% to responsible tracable reforestation projects.
TECHNOLOGY
Potential to improve home functions as well as life
Smart home devices, defined as any stand-alone object found in the home that is connected to the internet, can be either monitored or controlled from a remote location, and have a non-computing primary function. These devices have the potential to not only improve the functions of a home but also life within it for residents.
Our Answer
In our designs we integrate a smart extendable platform that helps to optimize comfort at individual unit level, as well as energy use at building level. We thrive to offer additional services that are easy to plug in that help to imrpove the functions of the home as well as life.
AFFORDABILITY
Housing economy
There is a growing imbalance between the most logical policies to make housing more affordable and policies designed to support a system that seeks to increase the price of housing. This translates into a massive group of families that are spending significantly more than 30% of their budget on housing, leaving no room for other financial assets. As a result families tend to share housing and younger generations tend to continue living with their parents since they can not afford a home of their own.
Our Answer
For the short term we design for affordability by designing for self-sufficiency. That way over a period of 30 years, owners face a lower total-cost-of-ownership compared to designs that rely on external energy supply. We intend to investigate opportunities like common shared area ownership, ground lease, smart services and building manufacturing approaches to design for affordability conditions depending on target group needs.
RESILIENCE
More extreme weather
Recent years have seen record-breaking weather extremes, with the warmest years on record for the globe since 2015. These trends are expected to continue over the next several decades. More extreme weather, in particular extreme heat and cold, will have a direct and significant impact on homes.
Pandemic(s)
2020 has marked itself as the year changing the perception of home. In urban areas people tend to spend 90+ % of their time indoor. Healthy indoor air quality has become an important element in preventing the spread of pandemics.
Another pandemic that gets too little attention is damp and mouldy living conditions. It is estimated that 84 Million people in Europe live in damp and unhealthy buildings, resulting in a 40% higher chance of becoming an asthma patient. That is roughly 25% of the European population.
Our Answer
In line with the increasingly stringent building energy regulations, we design our projects using Passive House principles, aiming for minimal energy need. In addition we design for healthy indoor air quality using active ventilation, air filtering, optional air disinfection, CO2 monitoring and of course re-using as much as possible the heat in the ventilated air to warm incoming fresh filtered air. All at zero emission.
To cope with the hotter summers, the passive house design helps in keeping the heat out, as well as the principle to use the air heating for air cooling.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Urbanisation
As urbanization intensifies, and cities struggle to serve even larger populations, the challenge of providing adequate housing will only worsen. In eg. Bulgaria 75% of the population is living in urban areas. About 20% of the total population lives in the capital Sofia, the biggest city in the country (1,2Mio inhabitants). This number is predicted to grow until 2023, when it is predicted to stabilise.
Aging Population
It is estimated that by 2100 31% of the population will be 65 years or older, compared to 20% in 2019. Already now is the potential support ratio of 3 is in the danger zone, and will only worsen, implying an increasing challenge for >affordable elderly housing and elderly care. All mainly resulting from low fertility rates.
Consequence of aging population is the increasing need for housing for single-person households, which has been growing at 30+ % in the period 2010-2019 in Europe, and is expected to increase rapidly.
Our Answer
As real estate investments are made with at least a 50 years lifetime in mind, it is important that home designs are able to be easily adapted to changing living needs, mainting a ‘feeling at home’. With increasing time spent at home, and decreasing number of people in households, this can have a negative impact on mental health. 31% of adults in UK experienced mental problems during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020-2021.
We design our projects to support the ‘feeling at home’ extended towards common areas, facilitating a mixed generation of inhabitants to build a community in a natural way. An adaptable smart connected home architecture make our designs prepared for supporting digital home services, like elderly care as well as supporting a community feeling by lowering barriers to contact.
ADAPTABILITY
We build the same way as we did 50 years ago
Housing cannot be easily modified or adapted to changing demographics, lifestyles, and other needs. We adapt to the housing stock, the housing stock doesn’t adapt to us. Traditionally, housing structures are designed to last multiple generations, slowing the demand for and introduction of new construction techniques, materials, and technologies. Many elements of modern housing can last in excess of 100 years. Moreover, a recent study by McKinsey and Company concluded that in many places residential housing is essentially built the same way it was 50 years ago.
>Demographics drive us to re-asses these notions.
Trends we see
Not adapting our building approaches will drive younger people to smaller cities and towns to live in more affordable communities while working remotely on projects based all across the globe.· While Retirement communities continue to be the housing of choice for aging affluent and savvy individuals, other elderly and infirm people, particularly those who require some level of daily care and support, have embraced a return to multigenerational living and joint family living arrangements, which utilize the space available in older, larger homes more efficiently.
The iGen generation has embraced co-living arrangements even more strongly than their millennial predecessors, particularly in the biggest metropolitan areas where affordable rentals—let alone homeownership opportunities—are virtually nonexistent. Their grandparents refer to the arrangements as “benign communes.” For the current generation, they have become the new normal.
Our Answer
We ensure in our designs that internal lay-outs can easily be adapted when needs arise. Creating an extra room, or connecting spaces no problem. This is supported by the modular building approach that supports >affordability as well.
A new-generation
real estate-development company
Our office locations:
Bulgaria
Netherlands
Slovenia
Switzerland
United Kingdom