Acquisitions boost turnover at Housing 21

Housing 21 has increased its turnover by 9% as it continues its strategy of buying extra care and retirement properties off housing associations who wish to focus on their core general needs stock.

The specialist later living provider has reported turnover of £274.9m in its financial statements for the year to 31 March.

This is up on the £251.5m reported the previous year. Social housing lettings income rose by 12% to £199.7m.

The 23,000-home provider’s revenue was boosted by income from 60 extra care properties purchased from Notting Hill Genesis and 444 acquired from Clarion last year.

“Acquisitions continued to dominate our growth agenda as more general needs landlords looked to focus on their primary portfolio and transfer their older people’s housing to a specialist provider”, Housing 21 said.

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In addition to the 504 properties acquired last year, Housing 21 also acquired 427 properties across seven schemes from NHG in February 2023, 11 extra care schemes from Clarion in June and earlier this month announced the purchase of 1,500 homes from Midland Heart,

Housing 21 also benefited from being able to raise rents by 11.1 per cent – September 2023’s consumer price index measure of inflation plus one per cent – as supporting housing providers were exempt from the 7% social rent cap. Its surplus increased from £26.4m to £27.8m.

The rise in income from lettings was however partially offset by a halving in income from development sales, from £20m to £10.7m. The group’s shared ownership sales fell from 125 to 57 and it had 70 unsold sales properties at the end of the year.

It said however that “sales had started to materialise post year-end” and it expects to sell most of the unsold properties this year.

The group completed 117 new homes in the year comprising 70 extra care properties on one site and 47 retirement living homes over two different sites. This was down on the 289 it built last year and below its target of 169.

The provider has an ambition to build 400 new homes a year in addition to stock acquisitions.