Investec and Cambridge & Counties green light £10m in development funding

Developer Osborne plans to build the scheme, to be known as Elmstead Place, next to the main campus of the University of Essex.

Elmstead Place is expected to be open in time for the start of the 2020/21 academic year. It will house students in their second and third year of university.

Some 15 townhouses will deliver 123 student beds. The accommodation will comprise a mixture of studios and so-called clusters, where students have private bedrooms but share facilities such as a bathroom and kitchen. There will be an additional studio block containing a further 12 beds.

Investec is continuing to grow its lending book in the purpose built student accommodation sector.

The lender has provided around £142m of funding to the student accommodation market across eight schemes so far this year. And since 2015 it has provided close to £700m of student accommodation finance.

Ian Burdett, at Investec Structured Property Finance, said the development would provide students with an alternative to the traditional house of multiple occupancy (HMO) offering.

Cambridge & Counties

Meanwhile specialist lender Cambridge & Counties Bank has lent £2m to property developers and investors Glyn Beech and Julie Taplin to help fund the acquisition and redevelopment of a number of properties across north Nottinghamshire.

The projects include the old Police Station in Worksop which is to be converted into 28 one and two-bed self-contained flats, Homes House in Mansfield, an office block to be redeveloped into a mixture of 40 one and two-bed flats, and Swanack House in Retford which will be converted into four self-contained retail units and 11 two-bed apartments.

Julie Taplin said the Nottinghamshire region offered strong opportunities for the real estate sector.