Real estate group led by former Guinness director to invest £1bn into rent-to-buy homes

AHTO will work with housing associations, local authorities and developers to buy up and provide more affordable homes in areas of need, it said.

Its model will see it use funding to buy up private sale and shared ownership homes from developers and housing associations through Section 106, which will then be leased to housing associations.

It has committed to also acquiring already existing or committed stock from housing associations’ pipelines and then leasing them back to that association, to free up capital for the provider.

Residents will be able to live in the homes and pay intermediate rent while they save for a deposit and build up their credit rating, before being able to buy at a discount of up to 10%.

There is a growing trend from developing housing associations to look at these new delivery models, in which they use private money to build homes that they deliver but do not own.

In April, Inside Housing reported that associations were increasingly looking to partner with for-profits to forward-fund homes that the funds would ultimately own.

This came after Hyde and investment giant M&G announced a deal that would see the investor forward-fund the delivery of 2,000 shared ownership by Hyde.

AHTO has said that it will focus on investing up to £150m per project in order to secure residential developments of up to 500 homes in London, as well as Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Reading, Dartford and Woking.

According to the organisation, there have been 1,500 intermediate rent-to-buy homes delivered in the UK, with 30 councils already approving the approach.

AHTO is a wholly owned subsidiary of private equity firm Maddox Capital. Maddox is a subsidiary of global private investment firm JRJ Group, which focuses on the financial services sector and other potential growth industries.

Ms Robinson, who was previously development director at The Guinness Partnership for four years, will be managing director of AHTO. Before her time at Guinness she was development director at Metropolitan Housing Association and delivered 45 housing projects in 21 local authorities.

AHTO’s chair is Peter Sugarman, partner and chief operating officer at JRJ.

Sam Senchal, chief investment officer at AHTO, said: “The only viable solution to the UK’s affordable housing crisis, without grant funding or subsidies, is to channel institutional investment into the market.

“The intermediate rent-to-buy model brings together our partners and institutional investors to deliver more affordable homes for families with less complexity and cost compared with current affordable home models.

“At AHTO we are passionate about helping provide high-quality homes for people on lower incomes and supporting our housing association partners to help customers become homeowners.”