London Square and Moda Living have joined forces to develop a £400m build-to-rent scheme at the Royal Mail site in Nine Elms, SW8.
London Square, backed by Ares Management, has exchanged contracts, paying £111.23m for the three-acre site. The developer has agreed a partnership with Moda Living to develop 756 flats, comprising private sale, BTR and affordable.
The deal, previously reported by EG in February, will see the developers team up to develop a £400m development on the remaining sites E, F and G at the former delivery office and mail centre.
London Square will deliver 186 private sale homes in a 22-storey building, with a further 437 BTR flats from Moda Living in two blocks of nine and 13 storeys. The BTR will include 103 affordable rent homes, managed by Paragon Asra Housing, and 30 discount market rent homes. London Square will undertake the construction.
The acquisition is the first central London scheme for BTR giant Moda and the first BTR scheme for developer London Square.
Royal Mail appointed architects Allies and Morrison to work on proposals for the site in 2008. An outline consent for 1,950 homes was granted in 2012, the same year that the mail centre ceased operations, with the delivery office closing in 2017.
The 14-acre central London site was valued at £662m at the 2014 peak of London’s residential boom. After a sale to Ballymore fell through in 2015, Royal Mail split the site up for individual sale, with each parcel ultimately going to BTR developers and investors.
Johnny Caddick, chief executive of Moda Living, said: “Our structure is now set up to deliver and operate thousands of homes for rent per annum across the UK, and naturally London forms a key piece of the jigsaw for our portfolio weightings.”
Adam Lawrence, chief executive at London Square, added: “Nine Elms Park is an outstanding opportunity for us, delivering an exceptional landmark 22-storey building with homes for private sale in a prime location and enabling us to showcase the breadth of our offering with the launch of our build-to-rent division, London Square Living.”
London Square said it has lined up five new BTR sites to deliver more than 1,000 homes, on top of the Nine Elms scheme under the new BTR division London Square Living. This includes 457 BTR homes at East Quay in Stratford in a joint venture with Peabody. At Alperton Waterside, London Square will deliver a further 470 homes on the site. Peabody and Redrow secured consent after paying £40m for the site.
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