Elephant & Castle scheme and East Village site merged to create £1.4bn private rented sector venture
The owners of the East Village residential neighbourhood on the Olympic site and the first phase of redevelopment at Elephant & Castle town centre have agreed to merge the schemes to create a vast £1.4bn private rented sector estate.
Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company, Delancey’s flagship client fund, DV4, and the Dutch pension fund asset manager, APG, have pooled together their assets to create a portfolio of 4,000 new market-rate rented homes – with each investor owning an equal share in the partnership.
East Village was previously a joint venture between DV4 and Qatari Diar, while the Elephant & Castle scheme was owned by DV4 and APG. The merger is conditional upon regulatory approval.
So far 1,500 homes have been built and almost fully let at the East Village, 1,000 homes are under construction across both schemes, and a further 1,500 homes have detailed planning consent at the East Village.
All of the homes will be managed and leased through Get Living London, the partnership's existing management and letting platform. Delancy and Qatari Diar’s UK arm will work jointly on the venture’s development activities.
Delancey's founder and chief executive Jamie Ritblat, said: “From a blank sheet of paper in 2010, we have worked tirelessly alongside forward thinking global institutions in a number of separate strategies to build the foundations of a very significant enterprise for the long term.
"We have been pioneers as the first major investors in large scale professionally managed residential, now with over 2,600 residents living in our homes and increasing every week. Bringing our businesses and partners together into a single group marks an important early landmark, and delivers the first new powerhouse to this exciting new investment class.”
The Elephant & Castle scheme is part of a wider £3bn regeneration taking place in the area and will also involve redeveloping the shopping centre at the centre of the junction and creating a new university campus for London College of Communication.
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The first phase will comprise of 374 new homes to rent alongside 272 student accommodation units, and will be ready by the autumn of this year.
In total the project will create 5000 homes as well as a new town centre, 500,000 square feet of retail and leisure space and five green spaces.
East Village, which once housed athletes during the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, to the Olympic Delivery Authority, launched in 2013 with the first residents moving in that year.