You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Family Mosaic records £75m surplus
A London housing association has increased its surplus to £75m, as it continues to keep rents at traditional social housing levels.
Family Mosaic has booked the £75m surplus from revenues of £266m in its 2015/16 financial statements, a 7% increase on last year’s £70m surplus.
The figures, published this week, also show a small drop in the landlord’s operating margin – cash left after day-to-day costs – from 29% to 26%.
The association said this drop was due to high revenue repairs spend and a £6m pension deficit provision included in the figures.
It also has a policy of keeping rents at social rent levels – usually around 40% of market rates – which depresses its income slightly in comparison to other London associations which charge affordable rents of up to 80%.
The statement said: “Keeping our rents affordable is a key challenge in order to help those most in need. Current government policy does not assist this client group in London.”
It also spent a record £209.6m on the acquisition and construction of new homes, which meant its debt increased by £60m to £739m and its gearing – the ratio of debt to assets – rose to 44.2% from 41.8%. This remains one of the lowest ratios in the sector.
The association purchased land which will provide at least 916 homes during the year and completed 599 homes – 285 for social rent, 108 for shared ownership and 206 for outright sale – as it moves to a target of 1,000 a year.
The landlord took £203.7m of its turnover, 76%, from its core social housing business while £42.1m came from open market sales and £18.1m from first tranche shared ownership sales.
Addressing recent merger activity in the sector, the statement said: “The board sees benefits of scale in responding to these challenges, and strategically is open to discussions with like-minded organisations.”
