Get Living to make £200m Manchester debut

Delancey’s Get Living is in talks to buy a £200m project in Greater Manchester, its debut scheme in the city. It is in advanced discussions to buy the 546-home second phase of Middlewood Locks, a 2,215 home scheme in Salford. The site was developed by FairBriar, a joint venture between Kevin McCabe’s Scarborough Group International, Hualing Group and Metro Holdings. Get Living could also take a proportion of later phases, with the entirety of Middlewood Locks forecast to have an end value of £1bn. The second phase consists of four buildings of up to 10 storeys. The first 550 homes in phase one have already been completed for the private for sale market. Manchester has been an obvious gap in Get Living’s portfolio as it aggressively adds to its pipeline of PRS sites in core regional cities. Delancey and Qatari Diar set up Get Living after buying the Olympic Village in Stratford in 2011 and it has since become one of the most active players in the PRS. In May 2016 Dutch pension fund manager APG joined the partnership, while further investment from Canadian pension giant Oxford Properties was revealed by EG at the beginning of 2018. The company currently has four sites with close to 2,000 active homes. In London it has more than 1,500 flats in Stratford, E14 and, another 400 in Elephant & Castle, SE1. Both of these sites have potential for expansion. In the regions it has so far secured 600 homes at Merchant City in Glasgow and 700 in Leeds at Globe Road, while it was also shortlisted to develop Smithfield in Birmingham and The Guinness Brewery in Dublin earlier this year. The FairBriar jv received planning for the 24.5 acre Middlewood Locks in 2015, which also includes 900,000 sq ft of commercial space. Scarborough secured backing for the project from Singapore-listed Metro Holdings in 2014. Established in 1973, it has a turnover of $1.3bn [£99.9m] and net assets of $1.4bn [£1.1bn] as at 31 March 2017. Its core business is in China, Indonesia and Singapore, alongside Middlewood Locks. The following year Hualing also threw its financial muscle behind the project. The Chinese company, established in 1988, is a private group based in Urumqi, Xinjiang. The group is the second-largest private corporate in China and the largest property developer in Xinjiang province. Its gross assets total $3bn [£2.2bn], with a net value of $1bn [760m]. To send feedback, e-mail alex.peace@egi.co.uk or tweet @egalexpeace or @estatesgazette