South: Housing association VIVID acquires Bargate Homes
Housing association VIVID has acquired Bargate Homes as part of its ambitious housebuilding plans to develop 17,000 more homes in the south over the next 10 years.
Mark Perry, chief executive of VIVID, said: “There continues to be a critical shortage of homes for people wanting to live in the region, which we’re doing all we can to help address. Bargate currently has around 2,500 plots secured for new homes giving us access to the extra land we need to maintain the momentum of our housebuilding programme. In addition, their expertise in land management and construction complements the skills of our team meaning that together we can achieve much more than either business can individually to meet our customers’ needs and aspirations.
“Central to our vision of creating more homes and bright futures is giving more people a safe and secure place to call home. This is vital to everyone’s health and wellbeing. We’re firmly committed to our social purpose of providing as many truly affordable homes across a range of tenures to suit our customers’ different needs and circumstances. This includes homes for social and affordable rent, shared ownership, market rent and private sale. By acquiring Bargate we’ll have the extra capacity and expertise to make sure we achieve and possibly even exceed our ambitions across Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire and West Sussex.”
Gerard Price, founder of Bargate Homes, said: “Since Bargate’s inception we’ve had a vision of creating a truly different home builder and we believe that after 12 years of passionate hard work by an ever-growing team of likeminded people, whilst not the finished article, we have realised that vision. Becoming part of VIVID will allow us to continue to develop our customer focussed business, building more individual homes in this beautiful part of the country that we choose to call home.”
A statement said: "Both businesses will retain their own identity, values, people, ways of working and approach to housebuilding, and will continue to work with a wide range of existing partners as this is what is driving the success of both."
KPMG acted as lead advisory on the deal.
VIVID
VIVID's vision is ‘more homes, bright futures’ and at the heart of this is helping customers improve their wellbeing and life chances. A leading provider of affordable homes, housing-related services and support to 70,000 customers in the south of England, VIVID has 30,000 homes spanning Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire and expanding into West Sussex. It is planning to build 17,000 homes over the next 10 years and 1,200 over the next year alone.
Bargate
Bargate has a simple guiding vision: to do the right thing and delight the buyers of its individual homes. Bargate's vision is underpinned by six core values.
Within its area of operation, predominantly Hampshire, Bargate will be delivering 240 quality homes this year and plans to maintain production around this level for the foreseeable future.
