UK house builder Barratt is accelerating its investment in London and has recently announced plans for 1100 new homes for England’s capital.
Barratt confirmed that two further joint ventures would bring the gross development value of the Group’s JVs in the capital to a value higher than £2bn and has now targeted 2,000 completions per year from its London business in the medium term.
In their first major partnership, British Land and Barratt London have secured planning permission for 463 homes, a 160-room hotel, retail and office space at Aldgate Place on the edge of the City.
The development, which is adjacent to the Barratt London Alie Street site, will include three towers of over 20 storeys high, as well as public open space and a pedestrian street. It will have a gross development value (GDV) of around £250 million and work is scheduled to start in the early stages of 2014.
Barratt London has also confirmed that is progressing a further joint venture with L&Q to develop the Sainsbury’s site at Nine Elms. The site has a GDV of £425 million with a detailed planning permission for 645 new homes, a brand new Sainsbury’s store and around a further 27,000 square feet of retail and office space. This would mark Barratt’s fourth joint venture in London with L&Q.
Mark Clare, group chief executive of Barratt London said: “Our Barratt London business is expanding fast and we are now working on £2 billion of new developments with four different JV partners – British Land, L&Q, Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing and Metropolitan Housing.”
“We are planning to deliver 2,000 new homes a year in London and our technical capability to deliver complex schemes in the capital is providing us with a competitive edge in securing new business” – he added.
The London business will continue to develop a range of residential and mixed use developments primarily in central London and then tactically spread out among other London boroughs. In the current portfolio, the residential properties have selling prices ranging from just £160,000 to £6m.
There will also be 770 homes with GDV estimated at £275 million on a riverside site in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The historic, picturesque 8.9 acre site has 130 metres of river frontage and is located between the centre of Greenwich and the 02 Arena. It is predicted that construction on the residential units, including 154 affordable homes, will start in autumn 2013.
As of 30th June 2013, the London business had a total of 14 active sites, excluding JVs, as well as a substantial pipeline for future delivery: “We have been particularly successful within the London market in 2013 and have approved six new major sites in central London, excluding joint ventures, with an aggregate gross development value of around £771 million.” said Alastair Baird, regional managing director for London.
