Landed Estate Look Outside Of London For Investments

Two of the U.K.’s oldest landed estates are making big investments outside of London as they look to diversify their portfolios.

The 300-year-old Cadogan Estate is investing outside of London at scale for the first time in its history. It has appointed Mayfair Capital Investment Management to manage a vehicle that could grow to up to £600M in assets. The company told Property Week it was investing outside of London to help it meet inheritance tax liabilities.

It has so far bought around £50M of regional assets, mainly industrial. It is better known for holdings that include a significant chunk of the famous King’s Road in Chelsea, and its London portfolio is valued at £6B.

Grosvenor has also signalled a significant push into the U.K. regions, although this is not quite so historic — the property company of the Duke of Westminster began investing in Europe and the U.S. more than 20 years ago, and a decade ago moved into Asia.

The company’s Britain & Ireland division has said it wants to triple the size of its strategic land arm to more than 30,000 homes in the next five years.

It has already built its pipeline of homes from 2,100 in summer 2017 to 9,300 today, with partners including a range of local authorities, corporate and private land owners.

The business will identify and support the taking of complex parcels of brownfield and greenfield land capable of hosting 2,000 to 5,000 homes through the planning system, design and build-out process, Grosvenor said. Typically these sites will be in areas of economic growth where the need for new homes is most acute.

Grosvenor will act as master developer overseeing the wider master planning of large sites, with individual parcels of homes being delivered by other developers.

The company’s main holding is a large chunk of Mayfair and Belgravia. It has total assets of £12.6B.