The Prudential’s property arm, Prupim, has bought more than 500 homes in a £105.4m deal that could open the floodgates for big City institutions to invest in private rented housing.
Prupim exchanged contracts to buy the portfolio of 534 homes in London and the south east from Berkeley Group. Savills will take on the day-to-day management of the properties and Berkeley will be a minority investor.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
We say: We make that an average of around £200,000 a home. And, as they’re in London and the South-East, that makes them pretty much the sort of properties which first-time buyers might be looking at.
We can’t help thinking that in the middle of a recession, with pressure on incomes, lenders demanding sizeable deposits, and burdened with student loan repayments, the last thing the poor beleaguered first-time buyer needs right now is institutional investors piling in to vacuum up homes by the hundred and prop up prices.
Still, that’s free enterprise for you: you have to take the rough with the smooth…