Fiera Real Estate and Packaged Living Launch UK Single-Family Housing Fund, Target £1 Billion Portfolio

Fiera Real Estate and Packaged Living Limited have launched the Fiera Real Estate Single-Family Housing fund, an open-ended, core-plus vehicle targeting a £1 billion portfolio of professionally managed UK rental homes. The fund has completed a first close with a group of institutional investors, providing seed capital for immediate deployment into an existing pipeline of single-family schemes.

The launch marks Fiera Real Estate's first dedicated residential rental fund and converts what had been a joint-venture-based single-family platform into a long-term, open-ended institutional product. Charles Allen, head of European real estate at Fiera Real Estate, and Ed Ellerington, chief executive of Packaged Living, discussed the fund's structure and strategy in a Q&A published by Green Street News.

Fund Structure and Investor Targeting

The Fiera Real Estate Single-Family Housing fund is structured as an open-ended, core-plus vehicle and is classified as an impact fund under the UK's Sustainable Disclosure Requirements. That SDR designation has become an important differentiator for institutional investors seeking ESG-aligned residential strategies, according to Allen.

"The fund is open to all investors, but there is particular interest from pension funds, insurance-based money and other institutional capital sources," Allen said. He noted that active conversations are taking place with parties across four continents, pointing to broad global appetite for UK single-family rental exposure.

To help cultivate relationships with local government pension scheme capital, the fund has appointed Mike Weston, the former chief executive at LGPS Central, as senior adviser. "LGPS capital is of course a big focus for us, and hopefully Mike's appointment will help open up some relationships there," Allen said.

Platform Track Record: Packaged Living and Aviva Investors

The new fund is designed to build on Packaged Living's existing single-family track record, which was established through a joint venture with Aviva Investors launched in 2021. That partnership initially targeted approximately 1,000 homes with a portfolio of around £200 million, with a pipeline expected to add a further £500 million. By March 2025, Aviva Investors reported its tenth single-family housing development with Packaged Living, bringing total fund commitment to more than £500 million since the partnership's inception. Across those ten developments, the JV has helped fund the creation of almost 1,400 single-family homes either exchanged or under construction.

Ellerington said the sector has changed substantially since Packaged Living entered during the Covid-19 period. "Ten years ago, perhaps two or three housebuilders would have engaged with an institutional rental partner. Five years ago that had grown to around 10. Today it is unusual for a housebuilder not to be talking to an institution about rental," he said.

A key element of Packaged Living's positioning, Ellerington noted, is that the firm operates as a developer itself. "That means we have an ability to understand the housebuilder's perspective while also fully understanding where we need to end up as an institution," he said. The fund does not require housebuilders to build bespoke products, instead selecting home types already in their existing range and focusing on interior specification and energy delivery.

ESG Specification: Low-Carbon, No-Gas Homes

All schemes in the Fiera Real Estate Single-Family Housing fund are built to a low-carbon, no-gas specification, typically incorporating air source heat pumps and photovoltaic panels on roofs. Packaged Living was among the first operators to introduce a zero energy bills proposition for residents, using battery storage to sell surplus energy back to the grid. Homes in the Aviva Investors JV that qualify for the program receive zero energy bills for ten years through a partnership with Octopus Energy, and homes are targeted to achieve EPC-A ratings with EV charging specified upfront.

Ellerington said the zero-bills concept was initially viewed as a novelty but has since become a core selling point in the wake of rising energy costs. "If we go back to 2021, trying to convince the housebuilders that they needed to change their spec to put in air source heat pumps was pretty challenging. That now is kind of known and expected, which makes the whole thing more frictionless," he said.

The fund's SDR-aligned impact framework and all-electric specification are positioned to appeal to institutional investors under pressure to decarbonise their real assets portfolios.

Geographic Focus and Initial Assets

The Fiera Real Estate Single-Family Housing fund operates across England, Wales, and Scotland, excluding Northern Ireland. Ellerington said there is no pre-set regional bias; instead, the fund's impact framework steers capital toward areas with an undersupply of housing. Key selection criteria include access to local schools and employment, undersupply in the local rental market, and the strength of the developer's covenant.

The first two assets to seed the fund are located in the East Midlands and the North West.

Fiera Real Estate UK is the European real estate arm of Fiera Capital Corporation, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker FSZ.

Sources

Fiera Real Estate — Q&A: Five questions for Fiera and Packaged Living on their new single-family fund