One of the South East’s largest housing associations has secured a £100million revolving credit facility from Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, to help fund its development pipeline of more than 2,000 new homes between now and 2025.
Golding Homes owns and manages more than 7,500 properties across Kent and has invested over £150million in regenerating its homes and neighbourhoods since it was established in 2004.
With a turnover of almost £50million, Golding Homes is the largest social landlord in Maidstone. All profits are invested back into building more new homes, improving existing housing stock and providing services to customers and the wider community.
The new facility from Lloyds Bank will underpin Golding Homes’ plans for future growth, allowing the association to provide more homes and services to people in Kent and expand its affordable housing stock.
The National Housing Federation’s latest Home Truths report stated that renting privately is becoming increasingly unaffordable in the South East, meaning local people typically spend almost 40% of their income on rent. A family seeking to buy an average home in the area requires an income of more than £82,000 to afford a mortgage – making home ownership unattainable for many.
Gary Clark, chief executive of Golding Homes, said:
“There is a sustained need for affordable housing in Kent. We are committed to working closely with local authorities, funders, architects, planners and partners to deliver high quality schemes and homes across all tenures – affordable housing for rent, shared ownership, and private sale. Golding Homes aims to provide quality homes and create communities where people choose to live. We already provide homes for more than 20,000 people across the county and this will grow to over 25,000 by 2025.”
Neil Perrins, director of resources at Golding Homes, said:
“This new relationship and facility with Lloyds Bank is our largest single financing deal since our creation 15 years ago and will help support our ambitious programme to deliver up to 500 new homes every year for the next five years. The team at Lloyds Bank demonstrated a strong understanding of both the challenges the South East housing market is facing and our commitment to address them. They delivered a highly competitive all-round product, significantly reducing our cost of finance and critically supporting our desire to work in partnership with high quality organisations.”
Lloyds Bank provided a tailored revolving credit facility finance package with two extension options for Golding Homes.
Matthew Smith, associate director at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said:
“Social housing providers play a vital role in their local communities; nowhere more so than in the South East, where property prices are often prohibitively high and affordable housing is in short supply.
“Our long-standing partnerships with housing associations are fundamental to our commitment to helping Britain prosper, and to our target of providing £5.5billion of new funding to the social housing sector by 2020. We work with more than 200 housing associations to support the excellent work they do and are pleased to be starting a new relationship with Golding Homes, a leading provider of affordable homes in the South East.”
Based in Maidstone, Golding Homes employs over 200 people.