Qatari Diar Real Estate, Delancey’s flagship client fund, DV4, and the Dutch pension fund asset manager, APG are to merge their London residential portfolios creating a new force in the UK’s institutionally-backed, residential investment sector.
The £1.4 bn (€1.75 bn) equal partnership will bring together East Village and the first phase of the Elephant and Castle Town Centre redevelopment, with Delancey and Qatari Diar’s UK development company working jointly on all the venture’s development activities.
The partnership is seeded with an initial portfolio of 4,000 new market-rate rented homes, located in London at East Village and Elephant and Castle. 1,500 homes are built and substantially let, 1,000 homes are under construction, and the remaining 1,500 homes have the benefit of detailed planning consent with early construction starts expected. All of the homes will be managed and leased through Get Living London, the partnership's existing management and letting platform.
The partnership aims ‘to become the leading player in the delivery of professionally managed homes in London and other major UK cities over the next few years’, the founding partners said in a statement.
‘This merger between two leading London private rented sector schemes is the first step in what is a much larger endeavour: to significantly increase the supply of new homes in connected and affordable locations in British cities,’ said Sheikh Jassim Al-Thani, Chief Development Officer - Europe and the Americas, Qatari Diar.
Jamie Ritblat, founder and Chief Executive of Delancey, added: ‘This merger marks the end of the beginning for our efforts to deliver desperately needed innovation, scale and true customer experience to the UK’s residential market. From a blank sheet of paper in 2010, we have worked tirelessly alongside forward thinking global institutions in a number of separate strategies to build the foundations of a very significant enterprise for the long term. We have been pioneers as the first major investors in large scale professionally managed residential, now with over 2,600 residents living in our homes and increasing every week. Bringing our businesses and partners together into a single group marks an important early landmark, and delivers the first new powerhouse to this exciting new investment class.’
Jones Day, Olswang, Mishcon de Reya, Herbert Smith Freehills, Simmons & Simmons, Michael Cohn Goldsobel, CBRE and PWC were the principal advisors to the parties for the transaction.
