Emergence of Institutional Investors in Post-Crisis Housing Markets in Manchester, UK

22 blocks.” (Collins, 2019:online) In addition to domestic commercial confidentiality, Loom Holdings is registered as an offshore company domiciled in Jersey, (Manchester Life Development Company 2 Limited, 2020) hence granted further financial benefits applicable for laterally traded assets. This financial tactic results in avoidance of three substantial tax payments to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs): (1) Capital Gains Tax (CGT), which “is paid on the profit made due to the difference in the price of buying and selling an asset.” (Bower, 2018:online emphasis added) (2) Stamp Duty Land Tax, which “is payable in England on residential property costing over £125,000, and rates range from 5% to up to 15% for properties over £2 million.” (Bower, 2018:online) And (3) Inheritance tax, “which currently stands at 40%” (Bower, 2018:online). Using Collin’s acquired valuation data for the current Manchester Life property portfolio, a conservative estimate for avoided tax calculated on Stamp Duty alone amounts to £49.5 million (see appendix for calculation). Please note that this calculation assumes the sale of the entire property portfolio at once, and is being used to demonstrate potential financial gains through deployment of financial apparatus.

Connecting Manchester Life to global theories which propel the central argument of post-crisis housing financialisation radicality, financially motivated institutional investors reconfiguring housing as a mode of capital existence “vastly transcends the territoriality of extraction and wholly blends into the circulatory system of capital, which now transverses the entire geography of the earth.” (Arboleda, 2020:14) Connecting usufructuary land rights to geographies of extraction, and acknowledging State complicity in the development acquisitional infrastructure, as: “The acquisition of foreign land is not a lone-wolf event. It requires, and in turn stimulates, the making of a vast global market for land. It entails the development of an also vast specialised servicing infrastructure to enable sales and acquisitions, secure property or leasing rights, develop appropriate legal instruments, and even push for the making of new laws to accommodate such purchases.” (Sassen, 2018:73) Sassen’s argument is evidenced in the primary evidence presented thus far, as the tracing of institutional investment (and marketisation of public land) has been enacted through legislative revisions, prominently materialising leasing securitisation under the stewardship of Manchester