Placefirst And Matter Raise £145M From Heavyweight Trio To Build SFH Giant
Matter Real Estate has raised £145M of equity that will be used to build up the portfolio of single-family housing specialist Placefirst.
Matter said it had raised the commitments from several investors, but it named three in particular: UBS, alternative asset manager GCM Grosvenor and Abrdn.
The investor said Placefirst had a target portfolio size of 6,500 homes, with 3,700 either already stabilised or under construction. It first invested in Placefirst in 2016, when the business owned and managed just 73 homes.
Matter said the capital has been raised for two strategies, one looking for core returns and the other looking for opportunistic returns.
The open-ended core strategy involves long-term ownership of a high-quality, diversified UK SFH portfolio of stabilised assets. The existing portfolio has a five-year track record of 100% occupancy and a net-to-gross ratio of 80%.
The opportunistic strategy is centred around developing and stabilising UK SFH schemes either by developing directly or via joint ventures or forward fundings with housebuilder partners. In the past year, Placefirst has undertaken such developments in tandem with Vistry, Miller Homes, Keepmoat, Strata and Jelson Homes.
UK SFH is on a major fundraising and investment drive, with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Kennedy Wilson and Greykite also allocating significant amounts of capital to the sector in the past couple of months.
