Our story
It started with a shortage, and turned into something bigger
Students should not have to settle for the status quo, and good landlords should not be invisible among the bad ones.
UniQuarter started with Alex Moyse looking at what he could do about the shortage of student accommodation in Christchurch. That work took him into the tertiary accommodation sector directly, and through it to the students living with the problem. They talked about the search, the endless applications, the rejections, and what happened in the properties they eventually managed to get.
It became clear that building more accommodation, while necessary, was not going to be the whole answer. Sitting alongside the shortage was a process problem. Students were searching across countless mediums and applying endlessly through multiple agency portals, often just to be rejected. Landlords and property managers were carrying annual churn, shorter tenancies, and the cost of screening applicants with nothing behind them.
The idea that came out of it was that a better process could do something more buildings on their own cannot. It could reward the landlords and property managers who do the job well. It could give students a simplified, verified route into the rental market. And by making student tenancies less painful to offer, it could encourage more private owners to put their properties forward in the first place.
Alex talked the concept through with his brother Scott early on. Scott recognised it straight away, in part because he had lived it. His own student housing while he was at Swansea University had left him with a set of stories that sounded a lot like the ones coming out of Christchurch, which made something clear fairly quickly: this is not a Christchurch problem. Students rent privately in every university town there is, and they run into the same things everywhere. What was being designed here would be worth having well beyond this city.
Scott came into the company to help build Alex's vision. He has spent years helping businesses develop complex manufacturing processes with off-the-shelf and custom software people can actually use, which is precisely what this needed.
Alex Moyse
Founder and Managing Director
A career in construction and residential development in Christchurch, delivering residential projects from feasibility through to completion. A member of the Institute of Directors New Zealand.
Scott Moyse
Co-founder and CTO
A background in engineering technology and software, with years spent building and automating the systems behind complex manufacturing. Leads the UniQuarter build.