Canadian fund makes £150m BTR debut
Canadian fund AlMCo has acquired its first UK build-to-rent assets in a joint venture with investor Ridgeback Group.
The jv has bought 600 flats across two schemes in Manchester and Birmingham with an end value of £150m.
In Manchester, the pair will develop 358 flats at Swan House (pictured above, left) after purchasing the £100m consented scheme from Cable Swan, a jv between Sir Robert McAlpine, Prime Developers, Britannia Group and Foundation Real Estate.
Canadian fund AlMCo has acquired its first UK build-to-rent assets in a joint venture with investor Ridgeback Group.
The jv has bought 600 flats across two schemes in Manchester and Birmingham with an end value of £150m.
In Manchester, the pair will develop 358 flats at Swan House (pictured above, left) after purchasing the £100m consented scheme from Cable Swan, a jv between Sir Robert McAlpine, Prime Developers, Britannia Group and Foundation Real Estate.
The development is in Ancoats, just streets away from Moda Living’s £154m Angel Gardens scheme. It has been specifically designed for BTR by architect SimpsonHaugh and includes 4,400 sq ft of ground floor commercial space.
A £50m development in Birmingham’s Deritend will add a further 237 flats to the portfolio. The jv completed the acquisition of Kingfield Heath on Bradford Street from receivers for £6.4m at the end of last year. The scheme (pictured above, right) received planning permission in 2017 with designs from Whittam Cox Architects under former owner ESRG but went into receivership along with a number of sites in the area.
AIMCo is one of Canada’s largest investors, with a global portfolio of investments held with jv partners in office, retail, industrials and BTR.
The fund’s international strategy is opportunity-focused, directly and through co-investments with local partners. While it has BTR in Canada, in the UK it has so far stuck to commercial assets and development via partnerships such as the jv with Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan, opting to sell resi developments to specialists.
The deals are the latest example of international investors flocking to UK BTR. Transactions hit a record high of £3.5bn in 2020, bolstered by major deals with Canada’s QuadReal and Realstar.
The tie-up with AIMCo is the second joint venture from London-based Ridgeback Group, which has also been busy growing its partnership with US heavyweight Angelo Gordon.
The duo recently added Birmingham to a growing portfolio, picking up 232 flats at Crest Nicholson’s Sherborne Wharf in the city centre. That followed a debut deal at the £50m Kangaroo Works in Sheffield, with further schemes in Cardiff and Battersea Exchange in London.
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Photo © AIMCo and Ridgeback Group
