| The BTR boom and going back to the future with pre-fabricated properties
The focus is on the build-to-rent (BTR) sector this week with news of two new JV’s, one in the UK and one in Spain, with plans to provide thousands of new private rental properties in London and the Spanish cities of Madrid, Valencia, Tarragona and Cordoba.
In the UK, EQT Real Estate and Sigma Capital are partnering to create GBP1 billion portfolio of 3,000 BTR homes in some of the more affordable areas of the capital, while in Spain, a tie-up between Nuveen Real Estate and Kronos is targeting 5,000 homes with a GAV of EUR1 billion.
“The housing market is still emerging in Spain, so by committing to this pipeline now we can be one of the first institutional investors to build a platform of scale in this area,” says Marta Cladera de Codina, Head of Iberia for Nuveen Real Estate.
Back in the UK meanwhile, house-builders north of the border are urging the the Scottish government to step up new builds to 25,000 a year and to include more private homes in that target. Homes for Scotland, (HfS), the country's housebuilding trade body, is unhappy that the government's current aim is to provide predominantly properties for social rent.
It could be a case of going back to the future to meet the housing requirement of the UK as a whole according to a new policy paper, Build Homes, Build Jobs, Build Innovation, which proposes a fast track investment scheme to construct 750,000 off-site, pre-fabricated, modular homes a year by 2030. Once looked down on as a cheap post-war housing solution, pre-fabs could account for up to a quarter of all new UK homes.
Another report out this week, presenting the findings of the Young Foundation’s Reimagining Rent programme, looks at how innovation can be used to drive improvements in the UK’s growing private rented sector (PRS) and tackle some of the biggest challenges including affordability, housing quality and evictions.
And finally, the Coronavirus pandemic gets a look in too with a a new survey of senior real estate leaders, corporate office occupiers and global institutional investors by international law firm CMS exploring the impact of Covid-19 on UK real estate. And as Ciaran Carvalho, Partner and Head of Real Estate at CMS points out, despite obvious challenges, it's not all doom and gloom.
“While the findings from our survey on the immediate prospects for some UK real estate asset classes are challenging, the resilience, innovation and commitment from our industry leaders to tackle climate change, diversity and inclusion and wellbeing is truly inspiring,” he says.
Property Funds World
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