Mention the term facility management, and conventional thinking often leads to spaces such as office towers, warehouses, retail precincts or public and institutional assets. All of these do require the attention of facility managers.
However, rising stars for them to now get involved with are the living sectors. This includes build-to-rent (BTR) developments, purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA), co-living, retirement living, land lease communities, and social and affordable housing.
It requires those tasked with managing these facilities to stay at the very top of their game to avoid maintenance cost blowouts or unforeseen issues cropping up. After all, these remain under the purview of the owner-operators and cannot be palmed off to tenants.
With that in mind, the issue’s theme is BTR. As you’ll read in our main feature story (pages 22-25), the number of BTR apartments has increased from 39,300 in the second quarter of 2025 to 51,000 in the first quarter of this year – and climbing. The scope for facility managers to organise themselves around this aspect of the living sectors, which don’t operate on the build-it, sell-it and then forget-about-it model, is enormous.
Add to that the growing number of PBSA and social and affordable housing units, and we have an ecosystem where facility managers are reframing the rules around how these sectors need to be effectively managed. To further understand their evolving role, we’ve teamed up with Living Sectors Summit as the official Media Partner for the event, which will take place on 11-12 November 2026 at the ICC, Sydney. Organised by FuturePlace, an Australian B2B media, events and advisory platform, the event (pages 30-32) is expected to welcome more than 700 attendees and host more than 75 speakers from some of the biggest companies operating in this sector.
Elsewhere in the edition, you can read about why implementing the right commercial solar strategy (pages 18-21) is more of a long-term financial win than just a sustainability checkbox on an ESG form. Then there’s the piece where we look at how building managers need to take another look at not only their physical asset register, but also their digital asset register, which includes passwords, access credentials and technology maintenance protocols that survive an abrupt change in facility managers or contractors managing the system (pages 26-28).
Other key stories in this edition cover fire extinguishing systems (pages 40-42), wellness lighting in commercial spaces (pages 14-15) and questions you should ask your grounds maintenance contractor before you sign the contract (pages 44-47).
But perhaps one feature that succinctly sums up the right attitude to the burgeoning living sectors is a piece on how BTR projects are gradually turning neglected sites into vibrant, resident-focused neighbourhoods (pages 34-37). Because the living sectors are not just taking from the community, but giving back too.
Enjoy the issue.
