Family Building Society has invested £10m into a UK housing fund focused on delivering affordable and social homes for rent.

The lender has joined Swiss investment bank UBS and Aberdeen Investments in backing a fund managed by Matter Real Estate which aims to develop or support joint ventures building new homes for families, including those of key workers.

The fund’s target is to finance more than 6,500 flats and houses across the UK, with around 3,700 homes already under construction.

Matter Real Estate has already supported several residential developments, including projects in Leeds and Sheffield and the regeneration of a group of terraced streets in Liverpool.

The investment reflects a growing role for institutional capital in funding both new housing supply and the refurbishment of older residential stock.

SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS

Mark Bogard (main picture, inset), chief executive of Family Building Society, said: “We see this as part of our social obligations to help families find affordable homes, as well as having the potential to generate an attractive return for our members.

“In Liverpool, for example, developers backed by the fund have bought up old derelict streets of terrace houses, brought them up to a high standard, and then successfully rented them out, positively changing the character of these streets.”

SOLVING THE HOUSING CRISIS

He added: “We at Family Building Society have long had a partnership with a private developer in London to do exactly that as we believe involving private equity in the refurbishing or repurposing old residential buildings as well as new build is an innovative way of helping solve the housing crisis.

“With the Government struggling to reach its target of building 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament it is fresh ideas such as this which the housebuilding industry as a whole should be considering”.