Goodstone Living has secured more than £100m of debt financing from NatWest and Allied Irish Bank to support the delivery of what it claims is the UK’s largest modular BTR community in Birmingham.
Smith’s Garden will be built on a 4.2-acre island site in the heart of Digbeth and will provide 550 BTR homes. The homes will be spread across six buildings, including a 26-storey tower, and the scheme will also offer co-working space, a fitness centre and creche and more than an acre of private garden.
The buildings will be manufactured offsite by Elements Europe at its modular factory in Telford.
Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, said: “Schemes likes this help to drive growth and regeneration right across our region. Smith’s Garden will be providing high quality new rental homes with high environmental standards in historic Digbeth – at the same time as creating jobs and opportunities for local people and the wider community.
“It’s great to see modular construction taking centre stage here – with Elements generating highly skilled jobs in Telford in a factory that will power the delivery of thousands of homes in the months and years ahead. It’s also good news that jobs will be created in Digbeth itself during the construction phase. I cannot wait to see this project come to fruition.”
Martin Bellinger, principal at Goodstone Living, added: “Smith’s Garden is one of the largest and most exciting build-to-rent residential projects in the UK and is testament to the evolution of this sector over the past 15 years. We want to show it is not just possible but desirable to build better now, and this helps improve and future proof assets for all of our stakeholders.
“This project also marks an important milestone for Goodstone which now has almost 1,000 units under construction and a large pipeline of development opportunities to scale its portfolio by leveraging the market dislocation driven by a higher rates environment and challenges facing the traditional build-to-sell model.”
David Jones, chief executive officer of Elements Europe, said: “Elements Europe are proud to have partnered with Goodstone Living over the past 18 months to design and prepare the largest modular build-to-rent residential construction scheme to date in the UK.
“Utilising modern methods of construction and delivering the apartments in a fully modular form not only provides programme benefits to our client, but also reduces the construction footprint by over 3,700 less vehicle movements into Birmingham and creates over 35% less construction waste than traditional construction methods. We will continue to contribute to the development of MMC in the UK together with GS E&C and The Pickstock Group.”
Michael Goode, director and build-to-rent lead at NatWest, said: “Quality build-to-rent is an increasingly important housing tenure for the UK and we are pleased to close our second transaction with the Goodstone team. Smith’s Gardens’ commitments on both embodied and operational carbon demonstrate Goodstone’s environmental ambition while its construction will support job creation and regeneration in the local area of Digbeth.”
Kieran Redford, corporate banking at Allied Irish Bank GB, added: “As a forward-looking lender it is increasingly important for us to be able to finance schemes that provide much needed new housing that has a positive social and environmental impact while being future proofed against changing market conditions. Smith’s Garden is pioneering in terms of its construction and environmental considerations while delivering 550 much needed new homes for rent.”
Construction of the scheme will commence imminently and Smith’s Garden will be completed during 2025.
