Gresham House seeks to double housing investment to £1.4 bn

Gresham House is expecting to double the value of its investment in managed housing assets from £700m to £1.4billion in the space of three years.

The specialist asset manager is seeking to expand housing activity funded through its existing affordable housing funds as well ‘new build to rent’ funds yet to be launched. Gresham House currently manages around £700m of investment in 4,500 homes.

It channels institutional cash into housing through various vehicles including its two for-profit housing associations - ReSi Homes and ReSi Housing.

The fund manager, which purchased social housing fund manager TradeRisks in March 2020, focuses on long-term equity investment. It manages around 1,000 shared ownership homes and 3,500 rental homes, and has previously said it plans to deliver an extra 5,000 shared ownership homes by 2026.

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A spokesperson told Housing Today: “The gross assets under management (AUM) within the housing division is currently close to £700m and we would expect to approximately double that over the next three years through existing funds like ReSI plc and ReSI LP as well as build to rent funds that we are in the process of launching.”

It will look to expand its GH Resi LP fund, which was set up to invest £300m a year from local authority and other pension funds into new build shared ownership. It will also expand Residential Secure Income PLC, a real estate investment trust with £350m invested in later living and shared ownership housing.

Gresham House has set up two ‘for-profit’ registered providers of housing, ReSi Homes and ReSi Housing, which serve as vehicles for GH Resi LP and Resi PLC to access affordable housing allocations respectively.

The comments come a week after Gresham House told the stock market it is increasing its overall fee-earning assets under management target from £6bn to £8bn over five years. As well as housing, Gresham Housing also invests in other sectors including forestry, new energy and infrastructure.