IN Brief:
- Forshaw and AND Capital Ventures have signed a letter of intent for a closed-ended investment vehicle worth up to £185m.
- The proposed fund would target build-to-sell, private rented, residential-led, and selected mixed-use developments across northern England.
- Forshaw would source and deliver projects while AND Capital leads fund formation, institutional capital, and investor relationships.
AND Capital Ventures and Greater Manchester developer Forshaw Land & Property Group have signed a letter of intent to establish a residential development and investment fund worth up to £185m for projects across northern England.
The agreement is an initial step rather than a completed capital raise. The partners still have to agree the final fund structure and complete due diligence, meaning the £185m figure represents the proposed maximum size of the closed-ended vehicle rather than money that is already available for construction.
If established as planned, the fund would target residential-led development, build-to-sell schemes, private rented housing, and selected mixed-use opportunities. Forshaw would identify and deliver projects, while AND Capital would lead fund formation, institutional fundraising, and investor relationships.
Forshaw operates across development management, construction, lettings, and property management, allowing the proposed vehicle to combine acquisition and physical delivery within one development platform. AND Capital’s role would sit primarily around the investment structure and access to institutional capital.
The arrangement addresses one of the constraints faced by regional developers attempting to increase project scale. A business may control land, obtain planning progress, and maintain a viable pipeline but still lack sufficient equity to advance several capital-intensive schemes at the same time. A dedicated fund can broaden that capacity if investors ultimately commit at the intended level.
That final qualification is important. A letter of intent does not guarantee that £185m will be raised, nor does the headline fund size translate directly into construction expenditure. Capital may be allocated across land, professional fees, finance costs, development management, contingencies, and equity requirements alongside the physical works.
Development leverage can increase the overall gross development value supported by an equity fund, but it also changes the risk profile. Interest rates, programme delays, planning conditions, building safety approval, sales rates, and construction cost movements all affect how much additional debt can sensibly be placed against individual projects.
Forshaw already has larger urban residential schemes within its pipeline. Current projects include a £64m residential tower in Manchester being built by Domis, while Riverside Place in Salford is progressing through planning with more than 800 homes proposed. Those developments indicate the scale of project for which access to repeat institutional capital can alter procurement and programme decisions.
A developer financing projects individually may have to wait for capital to recycle from one scheme before committing fully to another. A larger fund can reduce that dependency, giving the development team greater scope to progress design, enabling works, contractor engagement, and planning across several sites in parallel.
Construction demand would extend beyond main building contracts. Residential and mixed-use projects require demolition, remediation, piling, structures, façades, mechanical and electrical services, fit-out, utilities, public realm, and increasingly specialist building safety work on taller schemes. A multi-project vehicle can also create opportunities to standardise packages and build longer relationships with subcontractors rather than procuring every job entirely independently.
The proposed mix of build-to-sell and private rented housing introduces different commercial requirements. Build-to-sell projects depend heavily on sales values, absorption, and the timing of completions, while private rented developments place more emphasis on completed asset value, operational efficiency, maintenance, and recurring income. Mixed-use schemes can add further phasing and interface issues where residential, hotel, retail, or leisure elements have different operators and handover dates.
Those differences feed directly into design and procurement. A development intended for long-term ownership may justify higher expenditure on maintainability or operational efficiency than one built principally for sale, while institutional investors can impose their own requirements around sustainability, reporting, building performance, and risk management.
Northern English cities continue to carry large residential regeneration pipelines, but taller housing schemes are taking longer to move from planning into construction as developers work through building safety gateways, funding conditions, façade scrutiny, and specialist subcontractor availability. Capital availability can remove one constraint without eliminating any of the others.
Forshaw’s integrated development model gives the proposed fund a route from site acquisition through construction and later property management, but a larger capital base would also test whether that platform can expand without losing control of cost and programme. Managing several schemes simultaneously requires more design management, commercial oversight, procurement capacity, and reporting than delivering the same value sequentially.
The next meaningful milestone is therefore not another £185m headline but the completion of due diligence, agreement of the fund terms, and confirmation of committed capital. After that will come the first project allocations. Until those steps are complete, the vehicle represents additional development capacity in prospect rather than a funded construction pipeline.
