Eastlight Community Homes completes stock transfer with L&Q
Eastlight Community Homes has acquired 128 homes from large London-based landlord L&Q.
This is the third stock transfer that the smaller East of England-based provider has completed this year. In September, the landlord acquired around 700 homes from Clarion and 29 from Estuary Housing Association.
All of the homes in this new deal with L&Q, which are in Braintree and Tendring in Essex, are general needs homes, but include a number of shared ownership and freehold homes.
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Emma Palmer, chief executive of Eastlight, said: “Owning and managing more homes in our core operating areas help make us a stronger organisation: one best placed to provide the place-based services and experiences desired by new and existing Eastlight residents.”
Eastlight was formed in 2020 after Colne Housing and Greenfields Community Housing agreed a merger.
The landlord currently has a G1/V1 rating from the Regulator of Social Housing and now owns and manages around 14,500 homes.
In August, it raised £70m through the Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme (AHGS), which offers loans of up to 30 years to registered providers to build affordable housing.
A new round of the AHGS bond programme opened earlier this year. Eastlight’s funding was issued under the AHGS’s December 2033 bond. It has an all-in interest rate of under 4.65% and a maturity date of more than nine years.
Earlier this month, Wythenshawe Community Housing Group (WCHG) also received a £83.5m loan under the AHGS, which it will use to deliver 230 new affordable homes.
ESR Group’s Venn, the investment manager for the government-backed scheme, announced that 50% of the loan will be allocated to WCHG to develop homes, 130 of which will be for social rent.
The remaining properties will be for intermediate rent and shared ownership. The other half of the loan will support the delivery of improvement works to existing homes.
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