US equity firm backs Irish homebuilder for second time
GRASS Lake Capital, a US private equity investment firm, has ploughed €3m into Dublin-based homebuilder Homeland.
It’s the second time that the American firm has backed the Irish company, which is controlled by developer Neil Collins.
Based in Illinois, Grass Lake Capital has targeted funding at small-scale housing developers in the United States as well as countries including Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain.
The firm was founded by Chris Fiegen in 2015. He was once the chief investment officer at Equity International, a property private equity firm owned by US billionaire Sam Zell.
It has also emerged that Homeland has received financial backing from a fund controlled by Signal Capital, a London-based property investment firm founded by former Deutsche Bank executives.
Signal raised its second round of funding – €725m – last autumn.
Signal is targeting deals between €25m and €75m with its new fund – the kind of range that its chief investment officer has previously said would typically be too small for private equity players such as Oaktree or Centerbridge.
The most recent investment made by Grass Lake in Homeland was made around the same time that Homeland acquired a prime residential site on Dublin’s southside at Stillorgan.
The site was sold by stock market-listed Cairn Homes, which had bought it in 2015 for €5.5m.
Although Cairn had intended to build on the site, it never submitted a planning application for a development there.
However, it had anticipated being able to squeeze 50 units onto the two-acre site.
Homeland has been involved in a number of housing projects aimed at well-heeled buyers.
In 2015, it launched the Silveracre development in Rathfarnham, also on Dublin’s southside.
Those homes sold for between €900,000 and almost €1m.
Mr Collins and his wife, Aoife, used their NColl Construction and Homeland Investments vehicles to develop that project.