Billionaire Guy Hands’s property firm sells military homes to MoD for £6bn
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Terra Firma’s sale of 36,000 properties ends legal fight with government over resent housing reforms. A property company linked to Guy Hands has agreed to sell 36,000 military homes to the UK’s Ministry of Defence for almost £6bn, signalling an end to a long-running battle between the billionaire and the government.
Annington will hand over its 999-year lease on the Married Quarters Estate to the MoD and receive £5.99bn in return – almost twice as much as Hands’s company Terra Firma paid for Annington more than a decade ago, but less than the £8bn the homes were valued at last year.
The sale ends court proceedings brought by Annington over planned housing reforms. In September, the company took a legal fight with the UK government to the European court of human rights over fears it could lose significant sums as a result of the new Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act. It also launched a challenge in the high court on the same grounds.
The UK government sold 55,000 military homes to Annington in 1996, in a deal worth nearly £1.7bn. In 2012, Terra Firma bought Annington from the Japanese investment bank Nomura Holdings for £3.2bn. Hands, one of Britain’s highest-profile private equity investors, launched Terra Firma in 2002 and has since made more than £15bn in investments, including the record company EMI, Tilia Homes and Welcome Hotels.
At the moment, the MoD has a contractual lease agreement with Annington and pays rents for the properties under the long-term arrangement. In January 2022, the MoD said it was hoping to take back full ownership of the homes through enfranchisement rules under existing leasehold legislation.
