Dispatches from MIPIM 2025: stock transfers, Trump turbulence and mighty Manchester

This year was not plain sailing. The regulation MIPIM deal-making outfit of blue suit and/or gilet, normally so surreal amid the swaying palm trees, for once felt appropriate as Cannes was battered by rainstorms and backlit by flashes of tropical thunder.

Investors are navigating their own storm. Just when appetite for big property deals was starting to return after two years of high interest rates, the turbulence of trade wars and sticky inflation has shaken the market once more.

US investment

“This year I’ve probably talked more about politics than I have about property,” said one managing director of an American investment firm.

The risk was underlined on Wednesday morning with the publication of a report by the British Property Federation and CoStar, titled Who invests in UK property? The answer: mostly Americans, who accounted for 33% of UK investment in 2024 across commercial and residential assets.

The report concluded: “A positive trading and political relationship between the UK and the US is therefore especially important for property.” Good luck with that.

Within US investment, a small number of private equity buyers such as Blackstone account for significant transactions. Inside Housing caught up with a Blackstone source to discuss its UK housing presence, which ranges from for-profit affordable housing provider Sage Homes to build-to-rent operator Leaf Living and IQ, its student accommodation platform.

BX (as the private equity giant is nicknamed) is particularly excited about its purchase of Blackfriars Crown Court, a defaulted London office, which it snapped up at a discount in December and plans to convert to student housing.

The deal is emblematic of several trends in the property world, from the decline in commercial values to the booming student market.

The next wave of stock transfers

Habiko – a £54m affordable homes partnership between Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), developer Muse and Homes England – shows how private capital is pouring into affordable housing in increasingly sophisticated ways.

The 12-year joint venture will see PIC forward-fund the development of 3,000 affordable rent homes, which it will then own and manage through a for-profit registered provider. Homes England will get an equity return on its investment and will also provide grant funding for the homes through the Affordable Homes Programme.

James Agar, head of real estate origination at PIC, told Inside Housing that the organisation wanted to acquire an affordable housing portfolio but “we didn’t believe that the quality of the product [we wanted] existed. So you’ve got to build it.”

Passivhaus, the super energy-efficient construction standard, is an “aspiration” for the new homes, he said, adding that “we absolutely want to see a proportion of social rent in these schemes”. 

Intriguingly, he explained that PIC will also look at stock transfer opportunities – buying tenanted homes from cash-strapped housing associations, allowing registered providers to recapitalise and leaving them in place to manage the properties.

L&G has also expressed an interest in acquiring tenanted affordable housing portfolios. Could we look back on 2025 as the year that the next great wave of stock transfers, from housing associations to for-profit providers, began?

Mighty Manchester

London had a strong presence at MIPIM this year, with mayor Sir Sadiq Khan making his first-ever appearance at the conference and boasting that the UK government, the Greater London Authority and boroughs are all aligned and “geared for growth”. 

Arguably, however, Greater Manchester stole the show with all 10 local authorities present and plans for the redevelopment of Old Trafford with a new stadium and 17,000 homes. Whether you loved it or hated it, the big-top design by Norman Foster, resembling a locket dropped in strawberry milk, certainly got people talking.

Caroline Simpson, chief executive of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, was buoyant as she opened a panel hosted by Inside Housing on the region’s aims to build 175,000 homes by 2039.

The means to deliver this, she said, are devolution of the region’s Affordable Homes Programme to the combined authority, which will complete in 2026.

Elsewhere in the North West, it was revealed that Made Partnership, Homes England’s master developer with house builder Barratt Redrow and Lloyds Bank, is examining the prospects for a partnership with Cheshire East Council for a 1,500-home masterplan called Handforth Garden Village.

Made, which launched last year, clearly sees the North West as the ideal setting for its master developer ambitions. Its first site, Godley Green Garden Village, was announced in November and is in Greater Manchester.

Planning Bill

The UK government published its flagship Planning and Infrastructure Bill designed to speed up housebuilding. Developers largely welcomed the plans, which seek to cut councillors and public bodies out of planning decisions on smaller sites and reduce their ability to derail applications later in the planning process.

Inside Housing sat down with Conservative shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake to get his take on the bill.

Surprisingly, he said there were “a lot of things to be welcomed about it”, but warned of a backlash “as people realise they’re not going to have influence over planning applications through their councillor”.

Lorna Fielker, leader of Southampton City Council, said the bill was designed to help build homes in rural areas, which are surrounded by green belt and where planning applications are fiercely contested.

In more urban areas such hers, she said, viability is the bigger challenge. “We have planning permission on thousands of homes that remain unbuilt,” she added. “The government needs to look at barriers other than consent.”

“The government has done a fantastic job on planning,” said Mike De’Ath, partner at HTA Design. “I really hope government does the same on procurement [next].”

More public-sector power and common approaches would ensure every pound of government grant “goes twice as far as it used to” on a site-by-site procurement basis, he added, while Homes England could take on a bigger role in providing best practice.

Scotland back on track

Harrison Street is a rare beast – a residential investor active in Scotland. The Chicago-headquartered firm has luxury build-to-rent schemes in Edinburgh and Glasgow, where other investors were spooked after Nicola Sturgeon brought in an emergency rent cap in 2022. With private rent controls now being lifted for two years in Scotland, their decision to stick around may have paid off.

“We try to take a medium and long-term view of markets,” said Josh Miller, head of European transactions at Harrison Street. “Edinburgh and Glasgow just need a significant amount of new housing.”

He told Inside Housing that “we don’t take the view that all rent controls are bad”, adding that some kind of cap on in-tenancy rent rises would protect both tenants and investors. 

Scotland is pushing to bring in permanent private rent controls from 2027, but Mr Miller is sanguine about this – his issue is when policy “whipsaws every 12 to 18 months”. Hopefully, Scotland is heading “back in the right direction”, he added.