After a troubled seven-year hiatus, student landlord Unite Group (UTG) has got back into the swing of regional property deveopment. It has bought three sites since the year end, in Newcastle, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and on each plans to build a student-housing block at an aggregate cost of £89m. All three are expected to deliver returns in line with the company's yield-on-cost target of 9.5-10 per cent, which suggests they will together generate rents of about £8.5m. The company also announced on February 11th that it has taken out a new £124m fixed-rate loan to fund the projects.
Just how aggressive its new expansion plans are will be the focus of investors' attention when the group reports full-year results for 2013 next week. Unite's origins are in Bristol, but it switched its focus to safe-haven London in the aftermath of the property crash and only dipped its toe back into the regional market with a deal in Huddersfield last May.
