Housing fund loans to Urban & Civic, Fred Done, Select confirmed

The allocation of more than £100m from the Greater Manchester Housing Fund has been approved, taking the total invested to more than £300m, while the first loans from the fund have been repaid.

At a meeting of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority on Friday, leaders approved investment in more than 1,000 new homes across Bury, Manchester, Salford and Stockport.

The total invested by the Greater Manchester Housing Fund is now £305m; £5m more than the fund’s initial value. This is possible because loans previously made by the fund are repaid, with interest, and then reinvested in to new projects.

Trafford Housing Trust is one of the first organisations to repay its loan; returning £3.76m allocated for a development in Woodfield Road. Wiggett Homes has repaid almost £1m for a housing scheme in Charminster, and WB Developments, a subsidiary of Renaker Build, has so far paid back £14.5m of its £42.5m loan for 490 flats at Wilburn Basin in Salford.

The interest levels on the loans are undisclosed, but have been described by the fund as at “a commercial rate”.

The intention is to recycle the GM Housing Fund up to three times over 10 years.

The latest loans are:

• £1.5m to Wiggett Homes for 22 houses in Brooke Street, Radcliffe, Bury
• £36m to Select Property Group and Greater Manchester Property Venture Fund for 677 apartments on the former BBC site in central Manchester
• £43m to Urban & Civic for 351 apartments at the junction of Princess Street and Whitworth Street in central Manchester
• £3.9m to Hillcrest Homes for 24 houses on the site of the Brethrens Hall in Heaton Mersey, Stockport
• £1.8m to Blue Dog Property for 33 apartments on the site of the former Police Station in Baguley, Manchester
• £22.5m to one of Fred Done’s property companies for 380 apartments at the corner of Blackfriars Road and Trinity Road in Salford