Good morning. Here’s your daily round-up of the latest news and views from EG and a collection of industry-relevant headlines from the nationals, all perfectly curated to set you up for the week ahead.
The global chief executive of residential investor-developer Greystar has vowed to continue pursuing an “aggressive” growth strategy in the UK and Europe.
Speaking at the company’s new London offices at Brookfield Properties’ The Gilbert at 40 Finsbury Square, EC2, Bob Faith described the capital as “a crossroads of the world’s investors” and reflected on the group’s decision to start its international expansion in the city.
“When we first came over here it was 2012, just a small team of us,” he said. “The UK was recovering more slowly from the global financial crisis than the US was, and it seemed like there was this amazing opportunity around student housing, then multi-family, which didn’t really exist here. Every time we would talk to someone they would say ‘Oh, that will never work here, no one will ever want to rent in a whole building of rentals’. And we said, ‘Hmm, want to bet?’”
Faith continued: “And that was the bet that we made. If you look around the world at the great cities, they’re all growing. They all have shortage of housing, and they particularly have a shortage of housing that is even somewhat attainable or affordable. That is exactly what we do.”
Greystar now has close to 1,000 employees in offices across Europe.
His commitment to growing its residential footprint in the UK and Europe comes as Legal & General prepares to select Sixth Street and Patron Capital Partners as buyers for its £12.bn Cala Group. According to Sky News, the sale is expected to be announced this week. The purchase of the housebuilder by Patron would be a return of ownership, having offloaded its majority stake to L&G six years ago. Housebuilder Persimmon remains in the race. Rothschild is advising on the sale.
Patron is also splashing its cash on retail and with Lugus Capital has bought the 320,000 sq ft Blackpool shopping centre and retail park in Cork for around €49.5m (£41.8m), a tasty discount on the €115m vendor Värde Partners paid for it a decade ago.
It’s a busy week of updates from the market this week, with interims and final results from Henry Boot, Target Healthcare REIT, Springfield Properties, Supermarket Income REIT and MJ Gleeson to name but a few. There’s plenty of activity too in planning departments across the country as they decide whether to give the go ahead to hundreds of thousands of square feet of life science space, thousands of new homes and, of course, the world’s most objected to development – Flamingo Land – on the banks of Loch Lomond. You can find out exactly what’s going on this week in your EG news agenda.
And don’t forget, the most inspirational event in the built environment takes place tomorrow as future leaders and the greatest prospects for the real estate industry gather for our Real Estate Futures event. See you there.
All of the news from EG, plus a selection of headlines from the nationals:
Patron Capital buys discounted Irish retail park
‘We’re not stopping’: Greystar’s global CEO on European growth
Owner refis famed Agatha Christie hotel
Henry Boot offloads Coventry plots
EG’s news agenda: What to look out for this week
Weston Homes buys Deepcut mess for resi development
Milligan appoints new head of mixed-use asset management
London education take-up tops 350,000 sq ft
Kennedy Wilson expands credit facility to $550m
CBRE bolsters retail leadership with two promotions
Legal & General tipped to pick new home for £1.2bn Cala
Infrastructure quangos face abolition after HS2 debacle (£)
Rent controls will not deter housing investment, US mega-landlord says (£)
Gap in rents between north and south of England at new low (£)
London’s stores count cost of ‘tourist tax’ (£)
Asking prices for UK homes rise sharply in September (£)
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