Are Barratt's SMRT homes really clever?

First the Barratt ipad now SMRT by Barratt

I once got in trouble as a junior analyst for asking "What is the difference between a Barratt home and Dr Who’s Tardis? The answer was that a Barratt home looks bigger on the outside... "Put that in writing and I’ll take you to court said the then Barratt CFO, Mark Pain".

So you can imagine my surprise at the launch of Barratt’s SMRT homes, Barratt’s answer for some of those priced out of the housing market.

“It has been designed in a way that keeps the main living area flowing with plenty of space, so although it may be smaller on paper, it certainly doesn’t feel it,” says Dawn Kitchener of Blocc Interiors, who designed the show home in an interview for The Times. “I found it fascinating to work on and I believe the SMRT range of apartments have got a lot of mileage in the market.”

SMRT homes are, according to the Times Barratt’s smallest homes yet at 398 sqft (15% smaller than the average UK flat size of 463 sq ft).

However, it is not the first time Barratt has championed the smaller footprint.

In 2006, perhaps ahead of its time, Barratt launched the iPad (yes before there was Apple there was Barratt). Barratt's iPad was billed as the home for the iPod generation. The iPad’s were smaller than the SMRT homes (although not so small that letters have to be deleted from their name…) at just 380 sq ft.

The Barratt (2006) iPad was not as successful as Apple’s version launched in 2010, so it will be interesting to see if Barratt’s SMRT homes are the answer to the HSNG Crisis.

Joking aside, whilst reducing the size of a home is one way to make it more affordable, there are, in our view, better ways to solve the problem of affordability. Twindig believes that fractional homeownership holds the keys to unlocking the UK's housing crisis, in this model participation in the housing market is able to increase without decreasing the size of our homes.