Downing has completed a £249.2 million refinancing of Acer and Fernley, two co-living towers within its £400 million Square Gardens development in Manchester, a deal that matters to building and architecture professionals because it confirms institutional lenders are now willing to refinance completed co-living assets at scale, once a design and delivery model regarded as unproven. Consideration was disclosed at £249.2 million in loan facilities, provided by Bank of Ireland against the 1,862-unit scheme.

Downing is a Liverpool-headquartered developer and manager with more than 35 years of experience delivering city centre residential and student accommodation across the UK.

Bank of Ireland is an Irish bank providing the refinancing through its property finance group, which specialises in underwriting and syndicated lending within the UK commercial real estate market.

The 25-storey Acer and 45-storey Fernley towers were designed by SimpsonHaugh, Downing's long-standing architect on the wider Square Gardens masterplan, and were confirmed fully let to residents from more than 60 countries last September.

Savills Capital Advisors provided guidance to Downing throughout the refinancing process.

The structural driver is a maturing UK co-living lending market, with the sector's development pipeline growing by nearly 50 per cent over the past year as mainstream lenders move from treating co-living as an unproven niche to a financeable asset class in its own right.

For the sector, the timing matters because this refinancing follows the London market's own milestone, a £78 million debt package secured in January for the City of London's first purpose-built co-living scheme, showing lender appetite extending beyond the capital into regional cities like Manchester.

The deal also extends its stated push to grow underwriting and syndicated lending capability within UK commercial real estate, a strategy that positions the bank to compete for further large-scale living-sector refinancings as more completed schemes reach stabilisation.

The broader implication for the sector is that architects and contractors delivering co-living schemes can increasingly point to completed, fully let assets like Square Gardens as refinancing precedent, easing the debt case for lenders considering the next wave of co-living developments still in the design and construction pipeline.

Source: Place North West / LSH / Macfarlanes