Canada Life finances affordable Central London housing portfolio

Canada Life Investments has provided a long-term £53.5 million loan to London-based affordable housing provider Dolphin Living to finance a portfolio of London properties.

The fixed-rate loan has a term of 30 years and is secured by four Central London apartment buildings from Dolphin Living’s portfolio. Among the properties which secure the loan is a housing scheme being developed at Canal Reach in Kings Cross.

The facility’s loan-to-value ratio is below 50 percent and it is priced at an all-in rate of less than 4 percent.

Dolphin Living is a subsidiary of the Dolphin Square Charitable Foundation, an independent charity which was set up with an endowment of £120 million in 2005. The foundation aims to provide housing to customers including key workers in inner London. It owns the New Era Estate in Hackney, which it bought in December 2014 following high-profile demonstrations by residents about previous owner Westbrook Partners’ plans for the estate.

The properties within the four schemes which secure the new loan are, or will be, let on three-year assured shorthold tenancies subject to affordable and intermediate housing rents, with a limited number of open-market rents.

Dolphin Living said that it will use the loan to support its programme of delivering 1,000 new homes to rent to those on lower to middle incomes by 2020.

“With over 300 properties already tenanted, and a further 400 in our development pipeline, we continue to make strong strides forward in creating high-quality housing for our tenants, in a market where there remains limited supply and increasing rents,” said Jon Gooding, chief executive of Dolphin Living.

“We are pleased to have been able to assist Dolphin Living by providing this 30-year facility which helps further diversify our loan book. This is Canada Life Investments’ first mortgage secured against a portfolio of key worker properties in London and we are interested to provide more financing secured against this asset class,” said Nicholas Bent, head of real estate finance at Canada Life Investments.