Trafford Housing Trust secures £275m refinancing
Trafford Housing Trust has completed a £275m refinance deal, introducing a pool of new funders including institutional investors and replacing a previous £145m facility.
The new funding for the 9,000-home Trust is a mixed-maturity deal. The refinancing deal was arranged by Savills Financial Consultants and involves Lloyds Bank, BlackRock, Pension Insurance Corporation and Yorkshire Building Society.
As part of the agreement, £100m is available for on-lending to the Trust’s joint ventures currently delivering its homebuilding plans, including the 50/50 joint venture with housing association L&Q. Trafford Housing Trust and L&Q will each invest £80m to deliver 2,000 homes across the North West in the next four years.
Trafford Housing Trust was created from a transfer of Trafford Council housing stock in 2005 and has been developing new homes since 2011. Its turnover for the financial year ending in 2016 was £54.4m, with operating surplus of £12.4m. The organisation has developed nearly 500 new houses since 2011, 430 of which are affordable.
The Trust’s ‘profit for purpose’ policy sees development income ring-fenced from rented stock, and used to invest in development, including affordable housing, mixed-use and assisted living new build projects.
The Trust has development partner status with the Homes & Communities Agency and was the first housing association to access funding from the £300m Greater Manchester Housing Investment Fund. It also develops and sells homes independently through its Laurus brand.
Larry Gold, the Trust’s deputy chief executive and chief financial officer, said: “Trafford Housing Trust is a financially strong group of companies and this deal demonstrates great confidence among funding institutions in the Trust’s governance, leadership and ambitious growth strategy.
“The housing crisis means that in Greater Manchester alone supply of new homes is around 4,000 annually, compared with a projected need of over 11,000 a year for each of the next ten years.”
