Livingway abandons £30m Rochdale BTR acquisition 

After months of wrangling, the operator has walked away from a deal to acquire the 242-apartment Upperbanks development from the local council.

Place North West reported earlier this year that Rochdale Council had agreed to sell the build-to-rent scheme to Livingway for around £30m. 

However, four months on, the deal has now collapsed after the council and Livingway failed to reach an agreement on certain aspects of the deal. 

A spokesperson for Livingway said: “We are extremely disappointed to have withdrawn from the transaction after Rochdale Council did not comply with a technical matter in our agreement.  

“We offered the council several different methods of progressing with the transaction, although none of the options satisfied them, and we had no alternative but to exercise our right to terminate.” 

Read Rochdale Council’s response

The Livingway spokesperson added: “It is a shame, as we are wholly committed to investing in regeneration and social impact schemes across the North and in particular in Greater Manchester. 

“We know first-hand how difficult lease-up and stabilisation can be outside of the central Manchester bubble, and we wish Rochdale Council the best of luck as a build to rent developer, investor, owner and operator, especially given the rapidly changing and difficult investment market”. 

Livingway claims the council was “not supportive” of its vision to provide Rochdale with a “world class BTR project”. However, back in the summer when details of the deal first emerged, the authority seemed encouraged by the message such a transaction would send to the market. 

Speaking in June, Cllr Danny Meredith, Rochdale Council’s cabinet member for regeneration and housing said Livingway’s proposed purchase “demonstrated the demand for high quality private rented accommodation in Rochdale town centre”, adding that the deal was an illustration of how investors viewed the town after a sustained period of investment.