Home REIT Switches Strategy In Bid To Turn Fortunes Around

Home REIT has agreed to hand all investment management and alternative investment fund management responsibilities to AEW UK Investment Management following a special meeting in London on Monday.

Investors voted 99.98% in favor of passing what represents a dramatic change to the company’s business model. Following the decision, the property landlord’s focus on owning housing only for vulnerable occupants such as the homeless will be removed. 

Instead, the mandate from shareholders means it can invest in all types of residential property.

At the same time, former investment manager and alternative investment fund manager Alvarium Fund Managers has been replaced with immediate effect after it came under fire earlier this year following an investigation by forensic accountant Alvarez & Marsal.

Its findings uncovered transparency and due diligence failings by Alvarium.

It found that the firm had “undisclosed potential outside business interests” and “potential conflicts of interest” between several people involved with the company.

AEW was originally proposed as the trust’s new manager on 23 May, a week before the report was published.

The strategy also allows the company’s investment manager to restructure its portfolio and make its lease lengths more flexible. 

Home REIT had warned that changes were urgently needed after it collected just 7% of the circa £8.8M of rent owed for the period covering May and June.

Home REIT, which holds £1.2B of assets and is trading at a 68.9% discount to its net asset value, has also seen three of its major tenants go into liquidation this year.

Lotus Sanctuary and Gen Liv UK, which accounted for 18.2% of the trust’s rent roll, entered voluntary liquidation in March, while Redemption Project CIC, which made up 11% of the trust’s rent in June, went bust in August.

The overhaul of Home REIT’s investment ethos also comes after the group sold some of its property to raise much-needed cash to stay afloat, with some houses sold at an over 80% discount to the purchase price.