In a press statement on Thursday, Savills IM said the new vehicle will seek to develop and forward-fund both single and multifamily residential assets
Savills Investment Management (Savills IM) has announced The Land Managers (TLM) – the real estate investment arm of Singapore-based JL Family Office (JLFO) – as a cornerstone investor of its new strategy that seeks to raise £200 million for a build-to-rent residential platform in the UK.
In a press statement on Thursday, Savills IM said the new vehicle will seek to develop and forward-fund both single and multifamily residential assets.
These assets would come with a focus on regeneration areas and master-planned schemes that display ‘strong characteristics’ such as favourable renter demographics, evident supply or demand imbalance, and access to growing employment hubs.
The resultant platform aims to deliver ‘high quality, future-proof and professionally managed housing stock in the currently underserved UK market’.
This marks Savills IM’s second partnership with TLM, which also invested in the real estate investment manager’s UK retail park strategy announced in October 2021 with a target capital raise of £360 million.
Expressing confidence in Savills IM’s ability to ‘deliver strong performance amidst rental growth rise and burgeoning demand for quality rental properties in the UK’, TLM founder Andy Lim said the investment is in line with the firm’s strategy to increase its exposure to defensive assets deemed to benefit from long-term structural supply and demand dynamics.
Lim is also group chief executive of JLFO.
Savills IM’s co-head of client capital, Michael J Flynn, said the investment manager has also undertaken 4 funds with TLM and its shareholders as seed investors over the last 8 years.
With its recent acquisition of UK residential sector specialist Pitmore, Savills IM believes it is well positioned to advise on, and create, a range of products across the risk-return spectrum given Pitmore’s ‘particularly successful track record’ in single family housing.
This acquisition and launch of the build to rent strategy is in line with our strategy to deepen specialist operational expertise in chosen sectors. Residential is a key part of this based on our conviction that institutions will benefit from increasing exposure to the sector over the long-term, said chief executive Alex Jeffrey.
