Residential development company Willmott Dixon has announced another 650 Built To Rent units in London taking its own pipeline of BTR units to 1,300.
The scheme - still subject to securing planning consent - will be in Barking and on part of a none acre site previously outlined for a retail park. If consent is forthcoming, development will begin early next year with homes available to rent from 2018.
The current government says it aims to build 10,000 new homes, exclusively for private rent.
Build To Rent is the industry term for the practice whereby institutional investors (not always ones with track records in the residential sector) fund the construction of blocks of apartments. Instead of selling units, as has been the trend for decades, investors retain ownership but them let them out directly or through agencies.
Only one per cent of the UK's private rented housing stock is currently owned by institutions. In the US it's 13 per cent in the US, in Germany it's 17 per cent. The total is 23 per cent in Switzerland and 37 per cent in the Netherlands, according to data firm IPD.
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