Lendlease has created a registered provider of social housing.
The Australian developer has successfully registered new company LTYD Homes to own and manage affordable housing in its portfolio.
Lendlease’s biggest regenerations in the UK include the 11,500-home Thamesmead Waterfront with housing association Peabody, 3,000 homes at Silvertown Quays with Starwood (pictured) and the 2,000-home Smithfield project in Birmingham.
The pipeline also includes the contentious 3,000-home Elephant Park regeneration of the former Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle. Here, Lendlease has been working in partnership with Southwark Council since 2007. The pair have been criticised for the low numbers of social homes at the mixed-tenure housing scheme replacing the 1970s council estate.
Lendlease said the new affordable housing strategy would strengthen the resilience of its large city centre sites and help to attract new investment.
The expansion comes as a flurry of developers and investors turn to social housing for secure income. More recently, this has included McCarthy Stone, Patron Capital and Man Group.
A spokesperson for Lendlease said: “With a pipeline of over 25,000 homes to deliver in the UK over the next 25 years and, with many of these being affordable homes, we have decided to register as a provider of social housing.
“While we will continue to work in partnership with other major housing associations, we believe it will make delivery of our pipeline more resilient. It will also help us access new equity investment, which will ultimately allow us to deliver more affordable homes at greater speed, and in more diverse places and communities.”
In April 2020, Lendlease launched a £600m equity raise to strengthen its balance sheet, boosting liquidity to £2bn, to help it deliver its £58bn global development pipeline. The latest accounts for Lendlease Europe for the year ended June 2020 saw losses deepen with a £17.4m pre-tax loss compared to £8.2m a year earlier. Net assets fell from £12m to a liability of £6m.
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