Social housing finance

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Structured housing finance is about financing and delivering social housing, affordable housing and specialised housing.  Examples of the type of transactions which members of our team have worked on can be found opposite under "Experience".

Social housing ("council" or "municipal" housing) is housing made available for long term low rents within a regulated industry.  Social housing financing is usually provided by long-term conventional bank debt or capital debt markets.  It is often large in amount and the legal and financing structures can be highly complex.

Affordable housing is housing for which less than the full market rent is payable; and housing which is designed to be sold through at a less than market sale price or to "intermediate" purchasers, often first time buyers who are struggling to get on the housing ladder, through shared ownership and shared equity schemes.  Affordable housing can be owned by a range of different bodies, including Registered Providers (generally housing associations) and local authorities, investors and property companies.   The financing structures for affordable housing are varied and tailored, and can be very complex.  They draw on a range of project finance, conventional debt finance, corporate finance (including equity) and funds (investment vehicle) finance and alternative (Islamic) finance concepts.

Specialised housing is housing which requires a particular set of legal and finance skills because of the type of occupant or the style of the funding or the number of different parties and interests involved.  Specialised housing might be available to a particular group of people, such as hospital workers or students or older people in a care home setting or people moving from homeless to permanent accommodation.   Regeneration work is included within our specialised housing finance definition, as it usually requires a basket of different techniques, experiences and parties to be successful. Specialised housing is generally funded using project finance or hybrid project finance techniques, or mixing conventional debt and project finance.

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