Legal & General : launches first BTR scheme

07 June 2017

Legal & General (L&G) has launched its first build-to-rent (BTR) scheme at The Slate Yard in Salford. Residents are due to move into their new homes this week and for the first time will be able to experience L&G's new service-orientated proposition.

Across its BTR sites, L&G is creating bespoke, quality rental stock that offers a positive choice for elective renters. The Slate Yard will offer residents a lifestyle that they would otherwise not have access to, even if they owned their own home. This includes a 24-7 onsite team, who will attend to emergencies within a matter of hours, without you having to wait in, and can also help to arrange everything from deliveries to residents' events. They can even arrange housekeeping services for you, just like a hotel, such as picking up and dropping off your dry cleaning.

The residents will also benefit from favourable all-in costs, through significantly reduced energy costs, no letting fees, and free services such as WiFi and a car club. This equates to a saving of around £150 a month per apartment. Green initiatives include solar panels on the roof, which provides the building with communal lighting and power, and secure cycle storage. There's also a stylish riverside residents lounge, with free coffee on tap, which offers a vibrant environment to work in, meet other residents, or entertain friends.

Customers are also, for the first time, being offered longer and more flexible tenancies to create greater occupational security, with tenancy options ranging from six months to five years. They can also decorate their own homes and keep pets - options traditionally only linked to home ownership - with a readily available handyman able to do any alterations for them.

Located on Stanley Street, on the banks of the River Irwell and part of English Cities Fund's New Bailey regeneration area of the city, the 225-unit scheme is being developed in two phases. The first phase, which comprises 90 apartments, has now been launched to the market and is ready for customers to move in.

Dan Batterton, BTR Fund Manager at LGIM Real Assets, said: 'Our BTR vision has now come to life. For too long renters have found themselves at the mercy of expensive moving fees, unresponsive managers, and private landlords who often want to minimise upkeep costs and maximise rents. At the Slate Yard we have been able to offer significantly reduced living costs because of economies of scale, which a private landlord just wouldn't be able to do. The scheme's build maximises energy efficiencies and the combined weight of our negotiation power with external service providers allows us to save our customers thousands of pounds in bills each year.

'The improved service proposition and flexible leases has already attracted a wide range of residents. We have families, pet owners, empty nesters and young couples who have already reserved homes and are moving in this week, which is testament to how this new level of service and offering allows for all types of residents needs and gives them choice. We want our customers to feel like they are in their home, not staying in someone else's.'

Mathieu Elshout, Senior Director Private Real Estate at PGGM, added: 'The Slate Yard is a very good example of our BTR partnership strategy with L&G - investing in strong urban regeneration locations where we can build sustainable schemes that will have a positive impact on the built environment over the long term. As a responsible investor of Dutch pension capital, this is an excellent fit. The Slate Yard is the first of our BTR investments to be launched and we look forward to delivering new fit for purpose schemes in strategic city centre locations across the UK.'

L&G's total investment capability for the Build to Rent (BTR) sector currently stands at circa £1 billion, having raised capital from major pension funds for an open-ended Build to Rent (BTR) fund, as well as a £600 million JV investment by Legal & General Capital and PGGM. As well as Salford, its existing sites in Bristol, Bath, Leeds and Walthamstow are progressing well with construction work for both Bath and Walthamstow due to start this summer. Focused on key urban regeneration areas centred around transport hubs, it is targeting schemes of over 150 units, taking advantage of economies of scale to deliver better value and more choice for its residents, whilst building sustainable, vibrant communities.

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For further information, please go to www.theslateyard.com or contact:

LGIM Real Assets
LGIM Real Assets is a division of Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), one of Europe's largest institutional asset managers and a major global investor. LGIM manages £842bn in assets on behalf of over 3,200 clients (as at 30 June 2016), providing products and solutions spanning all asset classes. LGIM Real Assets, headed up by Bill Hughes, has AUM of £23.2bn (as at 31 December 2016), actively investing and managing assets across commercial property, private residential, infrastructure and property lending and, most recently, corporate credit.

Legal & General Capital
Legal & General Capital (LGC) focuses on direct investments in key sectors, particularly housing, infrastructure and SME finance. These reflect our aim to invest for the long term in economically and socially useful assets, to secure competitive returns and to create new asset classes for Legal & General's varied investment requirements, for our partners and for the wider marketplace. We work closely alongside other businesses within Legal & General to ensure the broadest range of skillsets are deployed on any project and to utilise principal investment and asset management synergies across the Group. Investments to date have included housebuilder CALA Homes, a Build to Rent joint venture, urban regeneration projects at MediaCity/Salford and Bracknell, SME finance group Pemberton and clean energy firm, NTR.

PGGM
PGGM is a cooperative Dutch pension fund service provider. Institutional clients are offered: asset management, pension fund management, policy advice and management support. On December 31, 2016 PGGM had EUR 205.8 billion in assets under management. The PGGM cooperative has approximately 720,000 members and is helping them to realize a valuable future. Either alone or together with strategic partners, PGGM develops future solutions by linking together pension, care, housing and work.

www.pggm.nl

English Cities Fund
English Cities Fund (ECf) is a joint venture between Muse Developments, Legal & General and the Homes & Communities Agency. ECf′s portfolio has brought forward major regeneration schemes in Salford, Liverpool, Wakefield, Canning Town and Plymouth. It was created by government to identify and break through the barriers to institutional investment and pave the way for higher levels of private investment in the re-shaping of our towns and cities.