COMMENT: It was immensely gratifying to see the press at the weekend declaring that Biggleswade tops the list of “London’s best-value commuter towns” following a report published by CBRE, which seems to have successfully tickled the public imagination.
It is a great accolade to have. And competition was fierce. Jennet Siebrits, UK head of residential research at CBRE, is on record as saying: “We looked at nearly 150 commuter towns and villages… There are many factors influencing this range in prices; including access to nature, local amenities, and the quality of schools. But for commuters there is a significant trade-off between property price, travel time and travel cost.”
Obviously it is most reassuring that UK Regeneration has picked a winner in Biggleswade for our flagship project. Of course, I have to say somewhat piously, we are rather keen on providing jobs also at Biggleswade, so that our new garden community isn’t totally reliant on commuting to London. But any research that supports our choice of location is good news of course. Go CBRE. Go Biggleswade.
Is this all beginning to look too easy? Needless to say, it’s been anything but! Trust me, it wasn’t luck, it was sheer hard graft.
People ask me: what has been the single most difficult challenge for UKR (in trying to do the right thing by the consumer in the housing market)? And I am utterly spoilt for choice in my response, because every single thing has been hard. But if you were to ask me what is the very, very hardest-most thing then it would just have to be getting the right financing partner, one that truly gives you the ability to be progressive in your strategy.
The UKR saga of a 10-year search for an appropriate like-minded financing partner has been a long and painful one. Thanks goodness, then, for Octopus Real Estate, which hase come – almost literally – galloping to the table on our UKR Biggleswade project and stepped up to meet the brief.
Octopus recently announced that it had completed the £28.3m refinancing of UK Regeneration’s 940-acre development site in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, working with Pure Commercial Finance. Generously giving us credit in its press release, it says: “UK Regeneration has assembled a large and complex site that will support the sustainable growth of Biggleswade. Development of the first site will be delivered on a phased basis whilst the borrower works concurrently with Central Bedfordshire Council to ensure that the wider site gains consent and is delivered.”
Well! It is a received wisdom that it’s a real challenge to get impactful debt finance into “strat land” (ghastly term) projects. But Octopus is the stunning exception that proves the rule. It prides itself on being a “specialist real estate investor” (well it’s not alone there) but far more impressively, explicitly regards itself as “a progressive lender”. And I will surely testify to that.
Octopus has a reputation among the investment agent community as the ultimate “market enabler”. And it sure is a great outrider for Her Majesty’s Government, meeting the challenge of many elements of the housing crisis, with the creation of quality residential housing stock, including retirement communities. In the past 18 months, Octopus Real Estate has lent more than £245m on residential sites securing more than 10,000 homes. And the property lending team has recently opened an office in Manchester to service the North, and support the government’s “levelling-up” agenda.
But above all, Octopus’s property lending team is extremely flexible, and can build truly bespoke solutions for borrowers, and this is why UK Regeneration has managed to build such a great partnership with these guys.
Dominic Gibson, investment director, says: “We are confident that the long-term development will attract strong demand. UK Regeneration’s vision and desire to deliver high-quality, sustainable housing is clear, and we are very pleased to support them as they progress this exciting project.”
And he works with us, as the very best sort of investor, almost like a public servant, being flexible enough to deal with us (a market disruptor through and through) while behaving with impeccable probity and protecting his investment committee.
The Octopus team goes from strength to strength, and I am hoping that UKR can go from strength to strength with it. The past 12 months has seen Octopus Real Estate set a range of new lending records. It has completed numerous commercial loans, each in excess of £20m, across the country and on a wide variety of asset classes.
The company’s appetite to lend both in the capital and the regions is as strong as ever, with recent completions in Bedfordshire, Derbyshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, London, Somerset and Suffolk underlining its broad national coverage.
UK Regeneration needed a knight in shining armour. We found one in Octopus Real Estate. And it is great to see CBRE validating that faith in us all. Market disruption is still hard graft, but we’re fortunate to have good friends.
Jackie Sadek is chief operating officer at UK Regeneration
