Chelsea-based investment and development company Martin’s Properties, and luxury residential developer BlackOnyx launched a new JV - called Obsidian Strategic - with plans to build a £100m land portfolio in outer Prime areas in and around the capital.
The new company will focus on buying sites within both Greater London and prime Home Counties, concentrating on “complex sites with scale and potential to create added value”.
Martin’s Properties, heading by Tom Martin, owns one of the biggest mixed-use property portfolios in Chelsea, including swathes of the King’s Road, and also has schemes in Chiswick, Fulham and Cobham (the latter a JV mansion with Visu Verum).
BlackOnyx, launched eight years ago by former Berkeley Homes and Dandara exec David Ardley, started out with a pretty tight focus on Prime Central London - developing over £88m-worth of high-end resi units in Westminster and RBKC (including a townhouse on Scarsdale Villas W8 and a quite impressive new penthouse on an existing Chelsea mansion block) - but has diversified out to larger strategic sites in the last couple of years, with sites in Chiswick and Guildford.
The two companies are already collaborating on a range of projects currently underway in prime London and Surrey.