Moorfield Group

Despite a challenging macro-setting, 2024 was another excellent year for Moorfield in which we solidified our position as one of the UK's leading real estate investment, asset and operational managers. It was another successful year of fundraising, transactions and value-creating asset management initiatives across our chosen categories: living and storage. There were also changes to the structure of our leadership to give clear visibility to the depth of the Moorfield senior team and the proactive succession planning already in place. Some of our key highlights include: ✅ We announced a series of promotions across our senior leadership. Marc Gilbard became Executive Chairman and Co-CEO, with Charles Ferguson Davie assuming Co-CEO and CIO roles. Steve Hall and Sadie Malim were promoted to the Moorfield Board as CFO and Chief Legal & Corporate Development Officer, respectively. Christopher Perera became Head of Origination and there were also promotions for Pablo Hutchinson Nuñez to Senior Investment Manager and Ollie Wallbridge to Investment Associate. ✅ We raised an initial £330m for MREFV - the fifth fund in our value-add series - and its co-investment initiatives. The total equity raised came from institutional investors based in Europe, North America and Japan, including Moorfield’s first UK-domiciled investors (university college endowments). ✅ MREFV forms a key part of our newly launched ’Hub & Spoke’ model, which incorporates MREFV as the ‘Hub’ and sector-specific side-car vehicles as ‘Spokes’, that are seeded by the ‘Hub’ and grown with additional co-investment funding from the MREFV investors and/or in joint ventures with other investors. We are in the process of raising a further £250m for these ‘Spokes’. ✅ We continued with our investment in the Multi-family Build-to-Rent (BTR) sector, with a £120m forward-funding agreement for a 440-home development in Manchester. We were a pioneer in UK BTR, making our first investment in 2012 before pausing our involvement in the sector in 2022 - having completed 5 successful projects that delivered target returns and won various awards for design and customer service. ✅ We continued to grow our self-storage, open-storage and logistics portfolios. Collectively, they now have a GAV of c.£300m and total almost 3.5million sq.ft of space. ✅ We grew our single-family housing for rent and student HMO portfolios, where we now have c.600 homes under management. Here, we are helping to institutionalise the offering by providing a superior standard of accommodation, sustainability profile and customer experience. ✅ We completed construction of our c.300-bed PBSA scheme in Lincoln and The Apiary, our 81-studio co-living community in Ealing. ✅ We significantly improved the sustainability profile of our portfolio, where we have been prioritising decarbonisation efforts with the introduction of solar panels and other efficiency improvements.

Moorfield Group is pleased to have contributed to law firm Macfarlanes' latest report on UK operational real estate (OPRE), with new analysis suggesting OPRE sectors could reach over £1 trillion in value. Our Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer Charles Ferguson Davie told the report authors: 'We have experience across multiple OPRE sectors; including multifamily, single family, student accommodation, nursing homes, senior living and self-storage as well as more traditional real estate sectors.' Moorfield was an early mover in the operational living sectors, first investing in student accommodation in 1997, senior living in 2008 and multifamily in 2012. Living, together with Storage, is a main pillar of our current investment focus. Across both these real estate categories, we believe we can deliver outperformance for our investors by leveraging our in-house asset and operational management capabilities that are supported by decades of experience. Read more about the opportunity in UK OPRE in Property Week:

Sustainability is a key focus of our self-storage strategy, where we prioritise decarbonisation efforts across our 880,000 sq.ft portfolio of new-build, refurbished and converted assets. Our collective Storage portfolio, which includes Open / Outdoor Storage, has a GDV of £300m and totals almost 3.5million sq.ft of space. Read about our decarbonisation strategy below.

The result of the US election and the latest UK budget are now expected to lead to higher inflation than might otherwise have been the case and the potential for greater economic uncertainty.   Moorfield Group has been investing in UK real estate for over 28 years, deploying approximately £5bn of capital into our chosen sectors across that time period, and we are accustomed to finding opportunity from periods of disruption.    Our current focus is on the Living & Storage sectors, which are supported by needs-based structural demand drivers, offer inflation-linkage and are less tied to the wider economic cycle. We can also deliver outperformance by leveraging our in-house asset and operational management capabilities, using design, brand standards, technology and environmental improvements to create assets that will be fit-for-purpose for the future. Read more in this public note from our co-CEOs Charles Ferguson Davie and Marc Gilbard:

Our Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer Charles Ferguson Davie spoke to Mike Phillips of Bisnow on what recent political events may mean for the UK real estate market. “Both the UK budget and the U.S. election result have led to concerns from the financial markets about inflationary policies and government deficits that have pushed out government bond yields,” he said. “A higher-for-longer interest rate environment means less real estate valuation yield compression and more expensive debt for governments, consumers and real estate investors to contend with.” At Moorfield Group, we have intentionally chosen investment themes supported by structural drivers of demand. Our current preferred asset classes - Living & Storage - are less exposed to the economic cycle and supported instead by inflation-linked and needs-based fundamentals in what are undersupplied sectors. As set out by our co-CEOs in a recent public note, these qualities 'provide both resilience and the opportunity for enhanced value creation.' You can read the full Bisnow article here:

The past few weeks have seen two major events take place: the first UK Budget from a Labour government in 14 years, and the re-election of Donald Trump as US President. In this public note, our co-CEOs set out what the implications are for UK real estate, and where Moorfield Group continues to see opportunity.

Head of Operational Asset Management Heiko Figge is speaking at StuRents' webinar on 21st November, which will take a deep dive into its annual student housing report - where Moorfield has contributed.    Join Heiko and other industry experts discuss asset management strategies, the investment outlook, the rental reform bill, and further market dynamics. Moorfield was one of the earliest investors in student housing, having delivered c.5,000 beds through Domain, our PBSA development and operational platform. Established in 1997, Domain has since been complemented by our investment into student Houses for Multiple Occupation (HMOs), which we entered in 2021 and have since aggregated a portfolio of c.1,300 beds.   Register: https://lnkd.in/ew-E3Yf5   

Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer Charles Ferguson Davie on today's Bank of England base rate cut.

Speaking to Property Week, Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer Charles Ferguson Davie highlights the importance of improving and protecting standards of accommodation and customer service as part of the new offer for renters in the single-family housing sector, where we have a portfolio of over £200m (GAV) across c.600 homes. He said that "we are both buying new properties from housebuilders and older properties where the quality is high enough. Sometimes the older properties can have more character and there is an opportunity to refurbish and improve energy performance.” Improving the quality of accommodation, its sustainability credentials, and the customer experience is key to all of our living sector strategies, which include single-family housing, multi-family build-to-rent, student housing (Purpose-built student accommodation and houses for multiple occupation), co-living, and independent retirement living. Read the feature below.