Offices within CENTURY 21 UK, the fastest growing estate agency franchise in the UK, are already beginning to benefit from a major nationwide deal which has started building thousands of new private rental homes across the UK.

Shepherd Direct, the owner of estate agency CENTURY 21 UK and Direct Lettings, announced the deal last year. It manages all lettings and property management for the innovative deal, created by Sigma, the residential and urban regeneration specialist, with equity from Gatehouse Bank plc and bank finance. The deal will eventually mean thousands of new homes are built across the UK in a number of phases.

Sigma has already begun building 200 homes on the site of the former Queen Mary School in the Fazakerly district of North Liverpool with the build process well ahead of schedule. Of those homes 64 will be available to rent under the private sector deal, with CENTURY 21 UK offices already working on tenant selection for their completion.

A new proposition, DifRent Private Rental, has been launched specifically to source tenants for the Sigma private rental properties and CENTURY 21 offices in a number of regions will also be utilising DifRent to facilitate filling the homes. Ongoing portfolio management will be undertaken by the Group’s Direct Lettings business.

The properties being constructed will comprise a mix of high quality family homes and apartments and will be constructed across 14 sites in phase one including 10 in Greater Manchester and four in the Liverpool area.

Rob Clifford, Group Commercial Director of Shepherd Direct Group, commented:

“When you begin working on such a deal, there are key milestones that you look for and with this relationship we are incredibly excited to see construction well underway, and we are now supporting our CENTURY 21 UK offices as they begin the search for tenants. These are high-quality, high-spec homes and apartments which is why we have developed the DifRent proposition in order to source equally high-quality tenants who can have the best at an affordable price. In that sense we are pushing a rental revolution in terms of getting tenants into properties which are top of the range and ensuring they have everything they need through a highly specific management service. The further good news for existing and new offices is that this is just the start of a project which will deliver thousands of new private rental properties across the UK. It will be our offices who are tasked with finding those tenants and clearly this will be a significant income-generator for those involved. We also have a number of new strategic relationships in the pipeline and therefore now is certainly the time to consider a CENTURY 21 UK franchise in order to benefit from these new developments.”