2017: The Conservatives invite Blackstone to invest in UK Housing:
American private equity titan Blackstone is one of the world’s largest property investors. It entered the UK affordable housing market in 2017 when it launched Sage Homes, a for-profit provider of affordable homes.
In 2021, Blackstone and Regis launched build-to-rent firm Leaf Living.
Sage Homes buys Section 106 properties from house builders as either affordable rent or shared ownership, then manages them, providing builders with more capital for development.
Gemma Kataky, managing director of real estate, joined Blackstone in 2015 and has been involved in both Sage Homes and Leaf Living from their inception.
As a global investor, what are the attractions of the UK affordable housing market to Blackstone? What does affordable housing mean to you?
We believe private capital is a valuable part of the solution to the chronic undersupply of affordable housing, which is an issue not only in the UK but in many major economies around the world. This is why, together with Regis, we founded Sage Homes in 2017 to create a long-term affordable housing provider in the UK.
To us, affordable housing means creating homes for the people who need them most. Having committed to funding the development of 23,000 affordable homes to date, we are proud to have established and backed a platform which has been recognised as the largest provider of new build affordable homes in England for three years running.
Blackstone’s Housing Strategy?
Blackstone traded the homes via its Sage Homes vehicle, a housing cooperative venture with the private equity investor Regis Group that was launched in 2017. The portfolio, which is found across the UK, consists of shared properties across 250 Sage Homes sites. USS has undertaken Sparrow Shared Ownership, a documented provider of social housing, to manage the homes.
James Seppala, the head of real estate Europe at Blackstone, stated the company had “created an institutional-grade portfolio which has, in turn, enticed more long-term institutional capital into the sector”. He stated the sale proceeds would be invested in Sage to help ease the undersupply of housing in the UK.
“Through Sage Homes, which was founded in 2017, Blackstone has been the biggest provider of newly built affordable housing in the nation for the last three years,” he said. Sage has perpetrated £3.7bn to fund the development of 22,600 affordable rent and shared ownership homes, of which more than 17,000 have been built so far.
Institutional acquisition in UK housing is still tiny compared with the US and continental Europe, and makes up just 2% of the total rented inventory, compared with more than 35% in Germany and the US, according to Savills.
https://parliamentnews.co.uk/us-firm-blackstone-sells-major-housing-portfolio-to-uk-pension-fund/
The Wall Street Takeover of London Housing: How Labour Sold Out Renters to Blackstone
While The Guardian reports “viability issues,” Chancellor Rachel Reeves is engineering the largest transfer of British housing to American finance capital in history
Oct 17, 2025
The Policy Change They’re Not Explaining
On October 17th, The Guardian reported that London developers would be “allowed to reduce the percentage of affordable homes” from 35% to 20%. The framing? Struggling developers need relief due to rising construction costs and regulatory burdens.
What The Guardian failed to mention: this policy shift arrives at the exact moment when Wall Street’s largest private equity firms are executing a calculated takeover of British housing stock. And the Labour government is not just allowing it, they’re actively facilitating it. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/17/developers-higher-subsidies-fewer-affordable-homes-london
https://europeanpowell.substack.com/p/the-wall-street-takeover-of-london
At Aug 29th, 2026:
…………apply via the “Continuous Market Engagement Programme”, that is, bids for individual schemes. We don’t know yet when an announcement will be made in relation to them. As under the Keir Starmer government, there is no funding ringfenced for councils. They will have to compete for funding with housing associations, for profit providers, builders and developers. Moreover, the government has said that they expect bidders to minimise their grant request and maximise their own contribution.
Overall, the £39 billion programme is for 30,000 “affordable homes” a year for ten years, 10% of the government’s annual target of 300,000. 18,000 of the “affordable homes” will be social rent, 6% of the government’s target. We have explained elsewhere why this programme is “a flawed programme which will not solve the housing crisis” and in our letter to Angela Rayner what changes need to be made.
Essentially, this is the programme drawn up under Steve Reed. There is no addition to the original £39 billion, a majority of which has been ‘backloaded’ until after the next general election. The government is still keeping in place the Tory definition of “affordable housing”, so it is still funding
- “affordable rent” (up to 80% of market rents) which was introduced by the coalition government to facilitate a 60% cut in funding,
- “shared ownership” and
- ‘for profit providers’ and big builders like Vistry.
Bit of UK history:
1947 Establishment of modern planning system nationalises development rights over land
For 20 years after the Second World War, councils are allowed to buy land cheaply, sparking the boom in council-house building (right), but landowners succeed in changing land compensation rules.
1979 Publicly owned land starts to be sold off
Start of the great sell-off of publicly owned land under successive governments.
……..
2003 Peak home ownership
Home ownership levels hit a peak, with 71% of homes in England owned outright or with a mortgage, before going into decline. Start of the present housing crisis; rise of ‘generation rent’.
borderslynn 