Housing association has £600m to draw on to further its growth plans
Sovereign housing association has secured a £250m credit facility to back its ambitions to build nearly 2,000 homes a year by 2022.
The facility, which is unsecured, was provided by NatWest, Lloyds Bank, National Australia Bank and Japanese banking groups MUFG and SMBC.
Sovereign said the deal would provide it with “financial security through a potentially uncertain political and economic period … and the flexibility and liquidity to allow [us] to consider the best time to approach the debt capital markets to raise long-term funding”.
Barry Nethercott, the housing association’s chief financial officer, said in order to build more homes and invest more in its existing properties, Sovereign needed “the fast and flexible access to finance offered by this new deal”.
Sovereign, whose 58,000-home UK-wide estate is valued at around £9bn, already has a £150m loan facility with the European Investment Bank, and at the end of March, the conclusion of its last financial year, it had £350m in undrawn loans.
Last week, Sovereign announced it had signed a deal with housebuilder Crest Nicholson to deliver nearly 1,000 homes on a residential scheme in Bristol.
Crest Nicholson will build 920 homes in a joint venture worth £229m as part of the next phase of the 2,700-home development at Harry Stoke, to the north of the city.
As part of the deal, Sovereign has agreed to buy 376 affordable and intermediate homes it is developing with the housebuilder. The rest will be sold on the open market.
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