Macquarie Asset Management has made an entry in the UK built-to-rent housing sector with the launch of Goodstone Living, a specialist real estate development and investment management business.
Macquarie Asset Management has partnered with two pioneers in the sector to form Goodstone Living, which aims to acquire, develop, and operate purpose-built rental communities across the country.
The new business will be led by Darryl Flay and Martin Bellinger, co-founders of the UK’s first private build-to-rent developer-operator Essential Living, which have overseen the development of more than 30,000 homes over the last three decades.
Goodstone Living will focus on the development and long-term ownership of rental communities in urban locations, benefiting from a growing demand for rental housing and an undersupply of high-quality accommodation. The business intends ‘to build a market-leading portfolio of scale’, the company said.
All homes developed by Goodstone Living will be focused on promoting decarbonisation and creating positive social value. The business will target net zero carbon operations for both its corporate and portfolio activities.
Named Goodstone Living , the business will acquire, develop, own and operate BTR schemes in London and key regional cities. Goodstone's strategy will be to target a mix of ground up development opportunities, buying stabilised (i.e. fully leased) assets, forward funding agreements and corporate M&A deals.
Macquarie has raised over $14 bn globally over the last 10 years for its other multifamily (US term for BTR) platforms, including a JV with Greystar focused on opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Dana Gibson, co-head of Macquarie Asset Management’s Real Estate team in Europe, said: ‘This sector has emerged as a global mega-trend in real estate over the last 10 years, driven by secular trends including urbanisation, digitalisation and demographic shifts. This has created an opportunity to access this growing asset class at scale, and we expect sustained demand and changing demographics will make it more resilient, less volatile, and correlated with inflation rather than the cycle.’
