Fiera Real Estate (“Fiera”) and Danescroft Land (“Danescroft”) are pleased to announce the sale of the Residential Land Partnership’s (“RLP”) 5.2 acre site at Steers Lane, Crawley to Bellway Homes for over £3million. The sale follows Bellway & Danescroft successfully obtaining detailed planning consent at a local level in January 2024 for 60 new homes. The sale concludes Danescroft & Fiera’s interest in the site with 185 homes have previously been consented at appeal in 2020 and have now been delivered by Bellway.
The site was acquired in the summer of 2018 on an unconditional basis and benefited from an allocation for a minimum of 75 homes. The land forms part of the now largely completed Forge Wood neighbourhood, in the north-east sector of Crawley, which has planning permission for 1,900 dwellings, a school, local centre and community hall, employment, parkland and open space. Development of this area is now almost complete, with the school open and parkland accessible.
Fiera acted as property advisor to RLP, a fund managed by Schroders Real Estate (“Schroders”). RLP was launched in October 2017 to help address the significant undersupply of housing across the UK whilst generating strong returns to investors through the acquisition and transformation of sites for residential development. This transaction represents the fund’s fourth sale.
Danescroft identified the opportunity to sensitively increase the number of new homes at this location and worked with its professional team to ensure the delivery of a policy compliant scheme that secured a significant uplift in the number of new homes earmarked by the council.
James Trelfa, Director at Danescroft commented “We are delighted to have completed the sale to Bellway, which now concludes our interest in Steers Lane. The business plan will have seen us obtain consent for 245 new homes on a site only allocated for 75 in the Crawley Local Plan, in an entirely policy compliant manner. Schemes such as this are vital to helping local authorities deliver on their housing numbers and we are actively seeking similar opportunities on an unconditional basis.”
Chris Button, Fund Manager at Fiera commented, “We are delighted to have completed the sale of our residual holding at Forge Wood to Bellway, concluding a highly successful 6 year business plan where we have unlocked planning to provide over 245 much needed homes for Crawley”.
