CBRE

Challenge​

The UK faces a chronic housing shortage. Its current housing stock is estimated to be more than a million homes short of what’s needed for everyone to have a decent home. The scale of the crisis is beyond the public sector's ability to respond, as new output falls significantly below the Government's housebuilding targets. In particular, the lack of affordable and social rent homes has increased homelessness, while the ability of registered providers (such as local authorities and registered providers) to build more affordable housing is often constrained by access to capital. ​

​Approach​

In order to bring large amounts of mainstream capital into the social property market, we worked with one of the largest real estate companies in the world. CBRE's Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) provides equity-like funding to registered providers in the UK. This offers predominantly forward funding to develop affordable housing, targeting at least 50% in social and affordable rent, up to 25% in shared ownership, and the rest in other housing types such as key-worker housing and temporary accommodation. ​

​Impact

​The fund aims to deliver sustainable and affordable housing in areas of need. Working in partnership with The Good Economy, we have helped develop a social impact framework to make sure impact considerations are part of the investment process, covering areas of social need, affordability, sustainability, quality of services, and increase in supply. The intention is to build a sector standard approach for impact in housing. In the fund's first year, it delivered 173 affordable homes, housing up to 402 people.