Real estate investment firm Ashen Capital and residential land and planning promotion specialist Merrow Wood have launch a new partnership to acquire or promote land suitable for housing through the planning system.
The new business, which will operate under the Merrow Wood brand, will work with landowners to deliver planning permission on sites that are “locationally sustainable” and have the highest housing needs.
Merrow Wood has been seeded with an initial circa £2m of equity to promote land in five locations in the South East of England, which should enable the delivery of circa 500 houses over the next five years. Over the next two years, the Merrow Wood equity commitment from the parties will increase to up to £5m, which could help to deliver up to 1,500 homes.
The business will promote land for residential uses by investing the sums necessary to achieve a planning consent for each project, before an onward sale to a housebuilder.
Steven Wright, managing director at Ashen Capital, said: “Partnering with Merrow Wood aligns perfectly with our strategy to enable the delivery of residential into the UK marketplace, with a focus on sustainable locations with latent housing demand. This is a complementary strategy to our earlier investment into Sibner Investment Management, whose mission is to enable development through providing development finance to SME housebuilders.”
Dan Webber, director at Merrow Wood, added: “Our mission has always been to unlock the potential of land in ways that are genuinely beneficial for landowners, developers and homeowners. By leveraging our own balance sheet together with Ashen Capitals’, we are now in a stronger position than ever to deliver on that promise.”
