Précis Capital partners is pleased to announce the closing of a £76m debt funding to Great Marlborough Estates to finance the redevelopment of Empire House, a vacant office block on Chiswick High Road, into high quality housing.

Gatehouse Bank has announced the launch of a £500m joint venture with TPG Real Estate Partners (TREP) to enable construction of up to 2,500 suburban, purpose-built family rental homes across the North and Midlands.

Having already established two significant build-to-rent property portfolios, this is the bank’s latest venture in this sector, with the joint venture set to become the one of the UK’s largest providers of purpose built single-family rental homes.

Paul Stockwell, Gatehouse Bank’s Chief Commercial Officer, said: “We are delighted to have found an experienced, institutional partner in TREP as we launch our third major private rental investment initiative. This joint venture will see significant capital being deployed to build and develop the next generation of build-to-rent housing, concentrating on high quality family homes in suburban locations.”

The venture has already secured an initial seed portfolio of four sites, acquired in partnership with leading housebuilder Countryside Properties, which specialises in mixed tenure and regeneration projects with an emphasis on Placemaking* design. The launch properties comprise of 321 single family homes, located in established residential communities in the Midlands, Greater Manchester and Merseyside regions of the UK. The partnership arrangements intend to deliver additional projects in the Midlands and North in the near future.

With significant equity, the venture will seek to strengthen existing partnerships, as well as developing new relationships with other leading housebuilders across the UK to forward-fund developments of new, high-quality rental homes for families which will expand the portfolio to its target of 2,500 houses.

James Piper, Partner at TREP, the real estate equity investment platform of global alternative asset firm TPG, said: “We are pleased to be partnering in this joint venture with Gatehouse, a skilled operator in the UK’s build-to-rent market. TREP has a strong track record of developing and owning high-quality private rental assets in North America and we are excited to leverage this expertise to achieve similar success in the UK, where there is strong and growing demand for new-build rental homes. With this initiative, we aim to be a valued partner not only to homebuilders but also the communities and families that will call these properties home.”

This is the third such venture for Gatehouse, a Shariah-compliant UK retail bank and real estate investment firm specialising in build-to-rent (BTR) and the private rented sector (PRS). The bank achieved a ground-breaking sale of its first portfolio, Thistle in January to an institutional investor for a total consideration of around £150m. The deal, believed to be the largest transaction of its nature in the UK to date, comprising a portfolio of 918 houses across 15 sites, predominantly two-and-three-bedroom homes across North-West England.

Affordable housing developer Pocket Living has announced that it has secured a £6.6 million debt facility with Pluto Finance, a leading provider of finance for property developers and investors. Lexi Finance, a specialist brokerage, introduced the two parties.