Refinancing for a stronger future
We are pleased to announce that we’ve successfully completed a major refinancing process worth £155m with new lenders.
As a leading supplier of social and affordable homes in north Wales we will now, through this new funding deal, be able to do much more of what we do well now – build even homes affordable homes, and have a positive impact on local communities we work in.
As the demand for affordable homes and homes for social rent is set to increase across North Wales, securing £155m in new funding at very attractive interest rates will mean significant future interest cost savings and will increase our borrowing capacity by £72 million, to help build more affordable homes in the region.
Our Director of Finance, Rhys Parry, said: “Securing this new refinance deal gives us much more flexibility to grow as a company and enabled us to reduce our overall interest rate payable by half. It was time to remove the restrictive covenants and business plan controls that we faced on the legacy debt as a result of being a stock transfer association, so that we could fulfil our potential to deliver new homes and drive even more investment in our current stock, delivering much needed new housing across north and mid Wales.”
Rhys added: “For the past ten years, we’ve established a good track record for delivery both of homes and customer services. With 178 units currently in development, we have a strong reputation for building new properties, and providing the appropriate support for the communities and the people who live in our homes. The refinancing now means we can start developing over 1,350 additional homes over the next 10 years. This is around 1,000 more homes than we would have been able to deliver under our old funding arrangements.”
“We are also very pleased that our financial and operational strength means that we are able to attract significant interest from lenders. Funding offers of almost £500m were received – three times higher than our funding requirement. It is also particularly pleasing that we have attracted a new lender to the Welsh social housing sector, and we look forward to enjoying long-term relationships with all our new lenders.”