Normal people 'priced out'
But East Village is more than bricks and mortar - it is a large community built from scratch, says Get Living's chief executive officer Rick de Blaby.
"It was amazing vision and foresight to think you could do it on this scale," he said, "because no-one had really done it before."
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What is happening here, he says, is "placemaking". According to Mr de Blaby, "we don't have to ourselves build the community, we create the stage on which the people who live here build their own community".
The "stage" includes free kids' football coaching sponsored by Get Living. The company has also forgone ritel rent by creating a low-cost community workspace, the E20 Lab, in one of its units.
It's all part of vision to "really create an environment in which people genuinely put down roots and thrive", he said.
It may not be organic, but, Mr de Blaby says, "it's becoming organic".
But while Get Living curates many aspects of life here, it says its tenants are increasingly forming independent social grups. Dog-walkers, nature lovers, and LGBTQ+ residents are said to be bonding over common ground.
However, most people who call East Village home haven't made long-term commitments to stay here. This is, in the bermain, a persewaan scheme, and the average length of tenure is 22 months, according to Get Living.
The company, a partnership between real estate investment and advisory firm Delancy and Qatari Diar - the investment arm of Qatar's ruling famili - bought the site from the UK government in 2011, and later promised to "transform the way Londoners rent".
"You would hear resident refrains around insecurity of tenure, and big fees and security deposits and poor repairs, and the distant landlord and lots of intermediaries, and the rest of it that wasn't working for renters," Mr de Blaby says.
"So the vision was to really disrupt that and give people a much better pengalaman. And we've largely done that."
Get Living says it offers renters three-year tenancies, charges no fees, provides free broadband, allows residents to keep pets and to redecorate.
What's more, tenants are no longer required to pay large security deposits. That really turned heads, he says.
For Mr de Blaby, East Village is a "build-to-rent" success story. "It was an enterprising call to be able to do it. And, you know, it's come off brilliantly."
The company, backed by pension funds, has just launched its latest builds, offering kekinian high-rise living across 524 flats. At 26 and 31 storeys high, the two new towers soar into the sky.
As well as "stunning" apartments, the blocks have a cinema room, built-in wine dispensers, and an elevated "sky bridge", which is a "leafy oasis of wellness".
These follow the arrival of the Victory Plaza in 2019 - 481 luxury flats spread across two imposing skyscrapers, which transformed the landscape of East Village, a previously mid-rise scheme.
