Sale of Miller Homes to US private equity group completes

The sale of Scottish housebuilder Miller Homes to US global asset investment group Apollo Funds has completed.

Companies House documents released last Thursday show the deal- worth a reported £1.2bn – went through on 31 March.

The £665m-turnover housebuilder was sold by investor Bridgepoint to Apollo as Miller seeks to boost its annual build rate by 70%.

Miller in January outlined its ambition to increase its annual development rate to 6,000 homes a year.

This would be a 71% increase on the 3,500 homes built in 2019 pre-pandemic and is higher than the 5,000-home ambition it has previously announced. The company completed 2,500 homes in 2020 amid covid-19 disruption and reported a pre-tax profit of £64m.

According to Housing Today’s Top 35 Housebuilders listing, Miller is already the UK’s twelfth largest homebuilder by turnover recorded in its most recent financial results.

See also>> Miller agrees sale to US private equity group

In May, Miller bought £5m-turnover strategic land business Wallace Land Investments, adding 41 sites and 17,500 plots to its strategic land bank. This move increased the number of sites it owns by almost 50% to 119, and almost doubled the number of potential plots under its control, to around 38,000.

Miller hit the headlines in November after admitting polluting a watercourse in Huddersfield for more than one kilometre. The firm was fined £200,000.

The deal with Apollo marks the latest in a series of purchases by private buyers of UK housebuilders, with McCarthy & Stone, Urban & Civic, Avant Homes, and Keepmoat all sold in 2021.