Close Brothers funds Leics homes: phased delivery lessons for project teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Close Brothers Property Finance has funded the fourth and final phase of Mulberry Homes’ Kingsbury Park scheme in Leicestershire, taking the development’s gross value to £120m and total output on the site to 288 homes delivered between 2018 and 2026. The deal means Close Brothers has now financed more than 1,000 homes for Mulberry across 23 schemes, from a 22‑unit site at Great Easton to multi‑phase estates of Kingsbury Park’s scale and complexity. Phased delivery has allowed housing, local infrastructure and open space to be built in step, supporting steady demand through volatile market conditions.
Technical Brief
- Fourth phase is described as the largest in Mulberry Homes’ 15‑year development history.
- Scheme sizes under this relationship range from 22 units at Great Easton to multi‑phase estates.
- Over 1,000 individual homes have been financed for Mulberry by Close Brothers to date.
- Relationship between lender and housebuilder has run for more than a decade of delivery cycles.
- Lender emphasises longer delivery timelines and more complex current market conditions for housing projects.
- Mulberry reports Kingsbury Park has endured both peak and trough housing market conditions while maintaining demand.
- Flexible, “pragmatic” funding support is credited with keeping construction sequencing and delivery “on track”.
Our Take
The 15-year relationship between Close Brothers Property Finance and Mulberry Homes, with 23 developments delivered, suggests that for medium-sized housebuilders in the UK regions, stable club-bank style funding lines are still a viable alternative to relying on volume-housebuilder balance sheets.
Delivering 288 homes between 2018 and 2026 from Kingsbury Park and a 22-unit scheme at Great Easton underlines how phased financing structures are being used to drip-feed supply into constrained local markets, which can help manage sales risk in secondary locations like Leics.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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