About us
We find buildings for people who need somewhere to live with support
GK Alpha Investment Group Ltd works in one narrow field: C2 property and the supported housing around it. We earn sourcing and matching fees, and we say that plainly.
What we actually do day to day
Most days are made up of three things. We speak to providers about what they need and where. We look at buildings, on paper and in person, and work out whether they can realistically be used for registered care or supported accommodation. Then we put the two together and help both sides agree terms they can live with for the next fifteen years.
The work is unglamorous and detailed. Bedroom sizes. Whether a corridor can take a wheelchair. Whether the local authority has refused a similar application two streets away. Whether a provider's registration and funding route will stand up to a landlord's solicitor. Getting those things right early is the difference between a building that opens and a building that sits empty for two years.
The full service
- Sourcing
- We look for buildings that fit a live provider brief, including stock that is not openly marketed. We approach owners directly where a building looks right.
- Matching
- We introduce providers whose care model, registration position and covenant suit the building and the lease the landlord can offer. A poor match costs both sides more than an empty month.
- Conversion feasibility
- A practical read on whether a building can be adapted: layout, bedroom count and sizes, communal space, staff accommodation, accessibility, fire strategy, kitchen and laundry, parking.
- Planning guidance
- We explain the use class position in plain terms, whether a change of use is likely to be needed, what your local authority tends to weigh, and where you will need a planning consultant rather than us.
- Lease structuring
- We help shape heads of terms: length, rent, review mechanism, break clauses, repairing obligations, guarantors. Solicitors do the documents, we do the commercial shape.
- Provider introductions
- For landlords, a route to operators who are actively looking, rather than an open marketing campaign that puts your building in every inbox.
Why we work in this sector
There is a genuine shortage of suitable, compliant accommodation for people who need supported housing. Older people who can no longer manage at home. Adults with learning disabilities who want their own front door. Young people leaving care. People stepping down from hospital. Services get commissioned and then cannot find a building that will register.
At the same time there are buildings standing empty that would work, owned by people who have never heard of a use class and have no idea a provider would take a twenty year lease on them. We sit between the two and make good buildings usable. That is the whole business.
The people behind GK
Gavin Ridge Fernandes
Co-founder
Khushdeep Kochhar
Co-founder
How we work with each group
Providers
You give us a brief and we filter hard before you spend a day travelling. We would rather send you two buildings that work than twelve that might.
Landlords
We tell you early whether your building is realistic, what it would take, and what it would not achieve. If the answer is no, you get the no quickly.
Investors
We talk about tenant quality, lease terms and planning position before yield. If you want guaranteed returns, we are not the right people.
Social housing providers
We source in the areas where you have identified need and work to the standards and timescales your own governance requires.
Standards and honesty
Here is what we will never say to you.
- That income from a care or supported living lease is guaranteed. It is not. It depends on a provider continuing to trade and continuing to be paid.
- That rent is government backed. Public money often funds the care, and sometimes the housing costs, but your rent comes from your tenant, not from the state.
- That a return is fixed. Rent reviews, voids, dilapidations, refurbishment and refinancing all move the number.
- That planning consent is a formality. Every application can be refused, and a refusal can leave you holding a building bought on an assumption.
And here is what we make clear to landlords up front, in the first conversation rather than the last: the risk that consent is refused, the risk that a provider fails and you inherit a specialist building with a narrow market, the cost of reinstatement if the use ends, the way local authority commissioning can change, and the reality that specialist property can be slower to sell than an ordinary house.
None of that means it is a bad idea. It means you should go into it with your eyes open, which is the only way this works for anyone. We set out the risks in full in the C2 guide.
Got a building, or a brief? Send us the details
We will tell you straight whether it works, and what it would take.