Home REIT investors have waved through a dramatic change to its business model as it scrambles to keep itself afloat.
In a near-unanimous vote at a meeting at the offices of PR firm FTI in the City, shareholders approved a plan to remove the property landlord’s focus on owning housing only for vulnerable occupants such as the homeless.
Instead, the decision would allow it to invest in all kinds of residential property.
In a near-unanimous vote at a meeting at the offices of PR firm FTI in the City yesterday, shareholders approved a plan to remove the property landlord’s focus on owning housing only for vulnerable occupants such as the homeless
The strategy also allows the company’s investment manager AEW to restructure its portfolio and make its lease lengths more flexible.
Home REIT previously warned the changes were ‘urgently’ needed after it only collected 7pc of the nearly £8.8m of rent owed to it for the period covering May and June.
The overhaul of its investment ethos comes after the group sold some of its properties to raise cash and stay afloat, with some houses offloaded for more than 80pc lower than the purchase price.
A probe by forensic accountants Alvarez & Marsal previously uncovered discovered transparency and due diligence failings by former investment adviser Alvarium Home Reit Advisors.
But despite plans to rewrite the strategy and dump its properties for peanuts, many remaining shareholders had become cynical and fatalistic about the future of the company.
Ahead of the vote, one investor told the Mail: ‘There seems to be a resigned attitude, so why bother?’