Developer Greystar has unveiled plans to deliver up to 20,000 new ‘garden-style’ rental homes across the UK over the next four years.
Greystar’s Waterbeach scheme, Cambridgeshire: credit – AFK Studios
The new strategy is intended to combine lower- and mid-rise, professionally managed homes with more open green spaces and shared amenities. Greystar said the strategy would primarily target high-employment growth locations.
The strategy has been launched alongside its first acquisition: a 387-unit development site at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire.
The scheme is located within Urban&Civic’s 6,500-home masterplan on the former Waterbeach Barracks site, four miles north of Cambridge.
Subject to planning approval, the development will include a mixture of market and discounted-market-rent homes, as well as shared amenities such as landscaped communal spaces, co-working facilities, a gym and more than 7,000 sq ft of retail and amenity space.
The development is backed by Greystar Equity Partners Europe II, the company’s recently closed €2.7bn (£2.3bn) pan-European residential fund.
Thomasin Renshaw, managing director of UK development at Greystar, said: “Our research shows renters increasingly want homes with practical layouts, access to green space and the flexibility to work from home while remaining connected to major employment centres. Those priorities sit at the heart of our garden-style approach.
“We’ve taken everything we’ve learned from delivering rental housing internationally and adapted it to meet UK planning requirements, local priorities and renter expectations. Waterbeach is the first demonstration of that approach, creating a blueprint we believe can be replicated across other high-employment growth locations.”
Mark Allnutt, executive director of Europe at Greystar, added: “The UK’s leading centres of innovation can only thrive if people can afford to live close to where opportunity is being created. That’s one of the biggest challenges facing our fastest-growing regional economies today.
“Britain has a proud tradition of creating green, planned communities, from the garden cities movement to Hampstead Garden Suburb. Our garden-style approach builds on those principles to create professionally managed neighbourhoods that reflect how people increasingly want to live today.”
A reserved-matters planning application for the Waterbeach scheme has already been submitted, with construction expected to commence in Q1 2027.
This follows Greystar’s landmark acquisition last month of 904 build-to-rent homes at Elephant Park, in London’s Elephant and Castle, from Lendlease and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in a £500m deal.
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