The black horse of Lloyds’ banks is a familiar sight on UK high streets, but the lender has quietly become one of the country’s biggest landlords, too, amassing £2bn in residential property, according to analysis.
The company has reached the landmark valuation on its property assets after a drive to buy more than 7,000 properties, in news first reported by the Financial Times.
Already the UK’s largest mortgage lender, it set out ambitious plans four years ago to acquire 50,000 rental homes by 2030 to become the country’s biggest landlord.
It launched its Lloyds Living division in July 2021, then called Citra Living, which provides homes for rent and shared ownership at 42 developments across the country. They are a mix of houses and low-rise apartment blocks, usually located in suburban areas, rather than city centres.
Lloyds Living now manages 7,500 homes, “from one-bedroom apartments for young professionals to four-bedroom houses for growing families”. This puts it among the UK’s biggest private sector landlords, which include the insurance and pension group Legal & General, the fund manager M&G and the property developer Grainger.
A spokesperson for the bank said: “We are pleased with the significant progress made to grow the Lloyds Living business since its launch in 2021, and how – in line with the strategic aims set out from the start – it is helping to increase access to good quality, affordable housing nationwide and is already contributing significantly to the group’s diversified income streams.”
Lloyds said most of its acquisition activity has been funding its development partners to build more housing.
In June, the bank struck its second big property deal with Barratt Redrow, the UK’s largest housebuilder, as part of the companies’ build-to-rent partnership. It added 598 two-, three- and four-bedroom homes in 11 new and existing Lloyds Living sites including Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent, Cheshire and Gloucestershire.
Last summer, Lloyds started turning former office buildings into social homes at a site in Pudsey in West Yorkshire, with plans for 93 homes to be rented at half the usual rate, making it the first UK bank to enter the social housing market directly.
The bank held a social housing conference in July, convening housing associations, lenders and the then-housing secretary Angela Rayner, to discuss the desperate need for more affordable housing in the UK. The Lloyds chief executive, Charlie Nunn, cautioned then that “the challenge is considerable and complex”, but added that there were “countless brownfield sites that lie empty”.
Diversifying away from lending into private home rentals means Lloyds is less reliant on interest income, which was squeezed in recent years by record low UK interest rates.
Lloyds has reported “strong income growth” from Lloyds Living. However, its performance has been overshadowed by the ongoing car loans commission scandal. The lender is also the UK’s biggest car lender through its Black Horse division and is expected to foot the largest bill compensation bill for the scandal among its peers.
