Rented retirement home provider Birchgrove has appointed Marcus Hodges as chief operations officer and Raphaël Koifman as chief financial officer.

Hodges has more than two decades’ commercial and operational management experience in co-living, build-to-rent and student accommodation. He was previously UK operations director for co-living provider The Collective, where he led a team of around 100 managers and operational staff. Hodges has also worked in senior operational roles for IQ Student Accommodation and Unite Students.

Koifman’s responsibilities will include all financial and tax aspects of Birchgrove’s business and the sourcing of funding to support the growth of the company. Koifman has extensive experience in real estate finance and previously worked for several institutional lending platforms and banks, including Cheyne Capital, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, Santander and Barclays Capital. At property developer Avanton, and property investment firm Griffen, Koifman was chief financial officer responsible for all operational, financial, tax and regulatory matters.

Birchgrove chief executive Honor Barratt said: “At Birchgrove, we have intimate and extensive knowledge of our later-living customer and what they need from us to build somewhere they can call home. What we were looking for in Marcus and Raphael was all the knowledge we don’t have, namely how to roll out a portfolio at scale and speed, and how to drive the best possible yield on exit. With these two on board, every day we are honing our operations and bringing our model closer to BTR yields.”

Founded in 2017, Birchgrove operates three retirement communities across the Southeast, with three further communities under construction and available for rental off-plan, a seventh community acquired in Chiswick, West London, and negotiations under way for two further locations to be added to the portfolio.