Moorfield Group and Bricklane, the proptech residential investment platform, have established a partnership that is targeting a €694.4m (£600m) UK portfolio of professionally managed homes for rent. The partnership, which represents the most significant technology-driven investment in the UK’s residential market to date, will focus on unlocking the institutional potential of existing stock, with the investments to be acquired and managed by Bricklane through its proprietary technology platform,Compass.
The partnership aims to acquire around 2,000 one to four-bedroom houses and flats over the next 24 months with an initial focus on London, Bristol and the South East. Using Bricklane’s technology, the Partnership will target attractive sub-markets with deep granularity, using unique bottom-up data to acquire rental properties that are expected to outperform in those areas at an unprecedented scale. Once units are acquired, the Partnership will seek to grow income and capital values through active asset management and refurbishment, with the aim of delivering a professional, high-quality proposition for tenants.
Ross Netherway, Head of Origination at Moorfield Group, said: “This partnership provides us with an efficient and scalable means to find, buy, and manage individual residential properties for rent in our target markets. We are excited to be partnering with Bricklane who have the best-in-class capabilities—both human and technological—to help us deliver on our shared ambition. This Partnership will help further diversify our activities in our ‘beds’ theme and see us drive the professionalisation of a vast but fragmented market."
Simon Heawood, CEO and Co-Founder of Bricklane, said: “The time is ripe for institutional capital to access and professionalise the mainstream Private Rented Sector. Demand is at an all-time high, while it is becoming less financially attractive for individual landlords to operate in the sector. Moreover, tenants are rightly demanding higher quality service and more secure contracts for their homes. Access to the mainstream market requires industrialising the acquisition and management of large numbers of individual assets, which is impossible without deep investment in technology. We have spent years building the technology platform, data science expertise and management experience to enable us to capitalise on this opportunity. We are very pleased to be doing this with a group of Moorfield’s track record and calibre, and the scale that this partnership brings will be transformational for our business, meaning that we are the leading platform of our kind in Europe. US operators have shown the potential of granular investment at scale and we believe that the UK’s population of renters deserves properties in which they can be truly at home.”
