Newcastle-headquartered Grainger plc — the UK’s largest listed residential landlord — announced the £31 million acquisition of The Astley, a 135-home stabilised, fully occupied build-to-rent scheme within its Manchester cluster from M&G Real Estate.

“The Astley is centrally located in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and adds to Grainger’s existing cluster of c.1,700 rental homes in the region, including Clippers Quay at Salford Quays and The Filaments near Spinningfields,” said Grainger.

“Today’s £31m acquisition was supported by Grainger’s ongoing accelerated Asset Recycling Programme.

“The company successfully disposed of an older PRS asset of 80-homes in London for c.£27m, enabling the business to recycle its capital into The Astley, a higher yielding, build to rent asset within one of its strategic cluster locations.”

Grainger CEO Helen Gordon said: “The Astley is an excellent acquisition. A stabilised, income-producing, high-quality build to rent asset of 135 homes within our existing Manchester cluster, supported by our ongoing asset recycling programme.

“Today’s acquisition is earnings accretive and reflects the increasing number of opportunities we are seeing in the market to acquire existing build to rent assets.”

Grainger has a £3.4 billion operational portfolio of 11,153 rental homes and a £1.5 billion pipeline of a further 5,000 purpose-built rental homes.