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Blackstone kicks off £1bn UK suburban build-to-rent sale
US private equity giant Blackstone is looking to sell its suburban build-to-rent business for over £1bn.
US private equity giant Blackstone is looking to sell its suburban build-to-rent business for over £1bn #UKhousingThe asset manager has appointed advisors at Goldman Sachs and CBRE to broker the sale of Leaf Living, according to Bloomberg.
Blackstone founded Leaf Living with property investor Regis in 2021 to manage new build suburban houses, known as ‘single-family’ build-to-rent.
It has, however, already taken steps to unwind the portfolio. Last year, it sold 520 Leaf Living homes to Salford-based developer Placefirst for £225m, in what was then the UK’s largest ever sale of operational single-family housing.
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The sale comes after US president Donald Trump vowed to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes in America.
Some UK build-to-rent specialists have suggested Britain could see a wave of investment from American institutions no longer able to invest in the domestic market.
Others, meanwhile, have played down the impact of the president’s intervention in the UK. A law firm close to the UK single-family market told Inside Housing the British market is already saturated with enough capital to go around.
A record £2.5bn was invested in single-family private rented homes in the UK in 2024, according to property agency Savills.
Just over half of all UK build-to-rent investment in 2024 was in single-family housing. The other 49% was in urban multi-family apartment blocks.
The rise of single-family housing has been rapid. It represented just 5% of build-to-rent investment on average between 2018 and 2022. Leaf Living, along with other big investors such as Lloyds Living and Sigma Capital, purchased 5,000 homes between them in 2024.
The advantages of single-family homes for investors include lower operating costs than flats, which have lifts and communal spaces to manage, and the profile of tenants, who tend to be families and less transient in nature, reducing turnover and voids.
There are now 14,000 operational single-family homes in the UK and a further 13,000 under construction.
Blackstone is also active in affordable rented housing (via Sage Homes, its group of for-profit providers) and student accommodation, through its IQ platform.
In December, IQ received planning approval to build 600 student beds and 71 social rent homes on the former Blackfriars Crown Court site in Southwark, south London.
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