Aberdeen Standard Investments’ latest pan-European housing fund has made its first investment in the UK.

The Aberdeen Standard Pan-European Residential Property Fund (ASPER) is investing £60m (€67.4m) to forward fund a build-to-rent project in Birmingham.

The investment will fund the redevelopment of a 10-storey post office building into 259 apartments for private rental.

The manager said the 14-storey development, which is in partnership with Lionel House Developments, is expected to be completed in the summer of 2021.

The Birmingham investment is the latest investment in the European residential sector, an area of the market that Aberdeen Standard Investments intends to invest a further €2bn by 2022.

Ed Crockett, the fund manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments, said: “This deal underlines our confidence in the UK private rented sector, which is set to increase by around 24% by 2022.

“Birmingham is a growing city experiencing high levels of investment over the last few years.”

Since launch in March 2018, ASPER has raised total equity of €398.2m with the intention to reach €1.5bn in assets under management over the medium term.

Aberdeen Standard’s current residential portfolio includes over 15,000 homes across Europe and the UK with an additional 3,400 units under construction and a combined total value of almost €6.5bn.