Europe is suffering from an affordable housing crisis, with the United Kingdom witnessing a more acute shortage of affordable housing for middle- to lower-income households than most other developed nations.

The scale of the housing crisis is self-evident. Statistics from the Centre for Cities suggest there is a current UK shortfall of 4.3 million homes, compared with an existing stock of approximately 26 million homes. This shortfall equates to 10 times the housing stock in Birmingham alone.

The supply-demand imbalance will be exacerbated by demographically driven demand growth and an increasingly ageing and redundant element of existing stock that no longer meets occupational standards.

An agnostic allocation remedy

In this context, it is not surprising that a number of new fund investment platforms have responded to the favourable investment dynamics.

This has been done, however, on a piecemeal basis with investment strategies f