Just don’t say it too loudly, but this is People’s Quantitative Easing on its way
Is it, really?
The housing association London & Quadrant has launched a partnership with the Greater London Authority to build 10,800 homes at Barking Riverside, in what may be the largest project undertaken by the sector.
L&Q takes over the development, aiming to create a new suburb the size of Windsor, from the listed housebuilder Bellway, which had owned the 179-hectare site since 1994 but saw the project stall because of a lack of public transport links.
L&Q will invest £70m to help extend the London Overground rail line to the site, and will tap the bond markets — where investors have shown strong appetite for debt backed by social housing portfolios — for its £1.5bn investment in the project.
That the standard financial markets, investors liking the look of a project, can finance housing shows that the government should just print money for the same purpose? Will?
Really?
First came Green QE
Next was People’s QE
And finally…NOT QE.
This is how the Hong MTR does things. Extend a railway line, create prime housing land, build housing, sell it, pays for the railway line, the new housing occupants give a regular income travelling on the railway line. They learned this from the MetroLand developments, so it’s nothing new.