Kevin McCloud, from Channel 4’s Grand Designs, has successfully raised £1.9 million for his sustainable housing developer company, Hab Housing. This marks the highest recorded amount secured through equity crowdfunding, which was obtained via online platform Crowdcube.
On explaining motivations for the crowdfunding drive Mr McCloud Hab Housing’s, Founding Director, said : “We want to ramp up the self-build side of the business so that we can assist communities and individuals in self-build and extend our core business of housing development, which has been very successful.
“To do that we wanted to raise about £2 million. We thought crowdfunding would be a really interesting way of doing this. That way, instead of institutional investors, who have a fairly cool, detached view of what we're doing, we've got hundreds of people out there now who are passionate about the business and who really want to be part of it.”
Mr McCloud also recently mentioned that he has previous been unlucky with property, he said: “I've been very unlucky. I've never made much money. Which is why I don't make programmes about property, I make programmes about architecture and design at home.”
The 649 new shareholders of Hab Housing overfunded the original target by 90 per cent. The investment was raised over 13 weeks and the original target was hit within 46 days.
The investors made contributions ranging from £100 to £150,000, the shareholders now own 25.39 per cent of the business’ equity. Hab Housing intends to give investors a five per cent dividend by the end of 2016.
The previous record amount secured through equity crowdfunding was £1.5 million.
Hab Housing, founded in 2007 by Mr McCloud, the organisation sets out to build well-designed, affordable and environmentally-friendly housing.
[Picture: Cristian Bortes]
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