Inside Housing – News – Specialist housing and temporary accommodation ‘increasingly attractive’ to private equity, report finds

The Local Government Association was approached for comment on the report’s criticisms of local government.

For-profit registered providers (RPs), the report said, are moving from “secondary purchaser” to “more active delivery partner” through forward-funding and direct land acquisition.

They are also buying older homes from traditional providers in bulk transactions and diversifying from general needs housing into specialist niches.

Private equity players are beginning to provide “platform-level capital” to scale for-profit RPs and delivery vehicles. They are also establishing RPs directly and looking to provide medium-term capital and potentially hold assets for longer.

Investors are increasingly attracted to affordable housing as a lower-risk asset class and are looking to back RPs.

In April 2026, Sixth Street committed to invest £1bn alongside HSPG in one of its RPs, Park Properties Housing Association, which has built a national Section 106 and affordable housing pipeline.

Rather than packaging stock for sale to insurers or pension funds, the deal will allow HSPG to use “scale, rental certainty and governance maturity to create exit optionality over time”, the report said.

Existing shared ownership portfolios held by not-for-profit providers are becoming “increasingly attractive” to for-profit RPs, private equity and institutional investors, who value their long-dated, inflation-linked income and relatively light operational intensity.

Meanwhile, private capital and local authorities are increasingly looking at funding and developing specialist affordable housing.

Older people’s housing is beginning to attract growing interest from institutional capital, underpinned by clear demographic demand and a desire to deliver greater social impact.

Finally, temporary accommodation is also emerging as a focal point for acquisitions as local authorities look for alternatives to nightly paid provision.

One of HSPG’s for-profit RPs, Seahorse, acquires and refurbishes under-utilised properties to local authority standards, paired with tenure models designed to move households from temporary accommodation into more settled housing.

Richard Tinham, managing partner at Winckworth Sherwood, said the affordable housing sector is moving towards “a more diversified debt and equity model”.

The 10-year Social and Affordable Homes Programme, a long-term rent settlement and the rollout of low-interest loans and bridging products send a “stronger signal” that affordable housing is a “delivery priority”, and that private capital is being “actively encouraged” to participate.

Mr Tinham added that for-profit providers are “extending beyond general needs new build homes into specialist propositions and older stock”.

“The question is therefore not whether private capital should have a role, but how that role is structured, governed and aligned with long-term social outcomes,” he said.