Legal & General acquires 147 single-family Build To Rent homes

Legal & General’s Suburban Build-to-Rent platform - known as LGSBTR - is working with the Vistry Group on a £40m deal to bring forward 147 new Build To Rent homes in Coventry.

The homes form part of a larger development by Vistry in the Keresley suburb of northern Coventry, where the firm is looking to build 550 family homes across two sites, with 147 of these now acquired by LGSBTR for private rental.

The deal will deliver a diverse mix of homes that benefit from air-source heat pumps, solar panelling, and electric vehicle (EV) charging points. The site is part of a wider Sustainable Urban Extension opposite an area of ancient woodland, with expected access to nature and open space alongside community facilities such as schools, convenience retail, and primary healthcare.

Legal & General’s SBTR platform was launched to develop large-scale ‘single family’ rental communities in suburban locations across the UK. LGSBTR’s housing schemes are community-focused and service-led, offering exceptional service as an institutional landlord, and a long-term, reliable service proposition so residents have choice, stable tenancies, and flexibility − a level of offering widely unavailable in the broader residential market.

The LGSBTR platform is working towards having all new homes delivered from 2030 operate at net zero carbon emissions, in line with Legal & General’s wider commitment to sustainability. LGSBTR has also set up a Healthy Communities Committee, which includes learnings from the NHS Healthy New Towns programme, to support health and wellbeing throughout the communities it creates. The committee aims to work with Legal & General’s SBTR developer partners to ensure that all homes and communities are designed to support health and wellbeing.

LGSBTR is owned by the Asset Management division of Legal & General (L&G), a leading direct investor, developer, and operator in residential property with one of the largest and most diverse platforms in the UK. This includes an established Build to Rent platform offering purpose-built multi-family BTR, with a £2bn+ portfolio that to date includes over 5000 operational apartments and another 5,000 in the pipeline.

L&G has successfully scaled up multiple operating businesses and delivered a number of strategies across a range of tenures, building houses to sell and rent; providing retirement communities; and finding new ways to deliver affordable housing.

A spokesperson for LGSBTR says: “To meet the UK’s ongoing housing demands, we need quality homes of all tenures for every kind of household. As a dedicated single-family housing investor, Legal & General SBTR aims to meet the UK’s diverse housing needs by working with leading development partners like Vistry to scale up delivery of new, high-quality family homes across the UK.

“Bringing new homes to Coventry – our first entry into the West Midlands – is part of our ongoing work to tackle the UK’s need for reliable long-term rental options whilst also building out assets for our long-term partners.”