Places for People acquires For Profit Registered Provider Rosewood Housing

Leading social enterprise Places for People and its fund management business, Thriving Investments, are pleased to announce the acquisition of Rosewood Housing (“Rosewood”), the For-Profit Registered Provider of high-quality, affordable homes, from FRP, the administrator of Inland Homes PLC. 

With 61 homes across the South East, the acquisition will see Rosewood join Places for People with immediate effect. Importantly for customers, tenancies will be unimpacted and repairs will continue to be carried out by Thrive Homes before transferring to Touchstone, one of the specialist property management businesses of Places for People, in the future. 

Scott Black, Chief Operating Officer at Places for People, commented: “We’re delighted to welcome Rosewood Customers into Places for People. 

“With rising house prices, mortgage rates and the cost-of-living crisis creating additional barriers for people to enter the UK housing market, we need to support providers where we can to ensure we’re delivering affordable housing across the country. 

“As the UK's leading social enterprise, our purpose is to change lives by creating and supporting thriving communities and a key part of that is building homes in the right places. Thriving Investments’ role in this acquisition not only supports Rosewood’s customers but also Thriving Investments’ ambition of tackling the UK housing crisis in partnership with institutional investors through providing strong financial returns and positive social impact. 

“With a diversified portfolio that is already providing thriving communities across the UK, we look forward to seeing Thriving Investments grow their portfolio with a new fund building on the Rosewood portfolio of shared ownership homes.” 

The UK shared ownership sector is becoming increasingly attractive to investors as it provides stable income streams blended with capital growth. Designed to make it easier for eligible purchasers to get on the property ladder, institutional investors are increasingly important in providing financing for the building and purchasing of shared ownership homes.

John Tatham, Finance and Investor Director at Thriving Investments, commented: “This transaction enables us to become an active market participant in what is a high growth asset class, whilst also ensuring the long-term future of the Rosewood business. Expanding our product range is key to delivering on our 20,000 home ambition, and, with the support of Places for People, we now have the ability to provide more Shared Ownership homes, whilst maintaining our track record of connecting patient capital with the right type of asset exposure. 

“Shared ownership is a hugely attractive segment for institutional capital, offering both a predictable, long-term income stream and capital appreciation, alongside very powerful social impact – it can be a key cog in what is the dominant socio-economic issue of or time, delivering the right type of housing at scale across the UK. The challenge for many institutions has been finding a platform through which they can access the sector. We have a high conviction in our genuinely differentiated proposition, with a management platform enabling us to acquire any property in any location, and a highly streamlined investment process enabling us to deploy capital at speed. Encouragingly we are already in positive discussions with a number of potential investors, for whom this strategy resonates strongly.”

Thriving Investments delivers much needed rental homes across the UK that aim to bring institutional capital to help tackle the housing crisis. It’s c. 1,800 single-family and multifamily Picture Living strategy recently secured a further £100 million of equity from USS. It also manages a £200 million discount-market rent housing strategy in Scotland and a £390 million joint venture with equity investor Housing Growth Partnership, focused on the delivery of 1,200 sustainable homes across regional city communities.

Places for People and Thriving Investments were advised by Savills and Trowers and Hamlins.

Inland Homes was advised by CBRE and Devonshires.