We have secured a significant investment of up to £70 million from BAE Pension Fund, enabling us to deliver 580 new homes which will allow tenants to rent on an affordable basis with an option to buy. This funding enables us to put a significant dent in our goal of building 5,000 new affordable homes by 2020 in order to help solve Britain’s housing crisis.
BAE Pension Fund has committed an initial £35 million to us via an inflation linked bond, with the possibility of an additional £35 million in the future. It has been a pleasure to work with BAE Pension Fund who used their intimate knowledge of the affordable housing sector to understand our unique offering. The team has worked with us over the past 18 months, during a period of significant market changes in the Registered Provider market, to successfully create an innovative funding structure for us.
We’re talking to a number of other potential funding partners to boost our investment even further. In order to deliver our ambitious pipeline of 8,500 homes we need £1 billion of funding in total.
One of the biggest benefits of our model is that it provides a continuous stream of affordable housing, because we endeavour to replace every home that is sold. Combined with the mixture of capital appreciation and rental income we can offer investors a stable, long-term, ethical, investment-grade opportunity. Keep watching this space for further developments.
Richard Connolly, CEO of Rentplus