Singapore’s GIC and Greystar Real Estate Partners have partnered to buy a UK student housing portfolio of over 23,000 beds from Brookfield.

Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and Greystar have agreed to buy Student Roost from one of Brookfield’s real estate private funds, the companies said in a joint statement.

In 2016, Brookfield acquired a 13-property portfolio as a base for creating an off-campus student housing platform across the UK. Since its acquisition, the portfolio has grown to more than 50 properties comprising over 23,000 beds with a development pipeline of approximately 3,000 further beds covering key UK university cities.

Today, Student Roost is the third-largest private student accommodation provider in the UK.

Brad Hyler, managing partner and head of Brookfield’s European real estate business, said: “Over the past six years, we have invested to transform Student Roost from a small portfolio of externally-managed assets, into one of the UK’s largest purpose-built student accommodation providers with fully integrated operations, growth, sales and marketing capabilities.”

Lee Kok Sun, real estate CIO at GIC, said: “We are confident that Student Roost will continue to offer high-quality purpose-built student accommodation with good occupancy rates at a competitive rental price point which attracts demand from both local as well as international students.”

Tracy Stroh, GIC’s Europe real estate head, said: “We expect student enrolment to grow over the longer term. This will boost demand for well-located, purpose-built student accommodation.

“We look forward to working closely with Greystar and Student Roost to deliver value-add such as refurbishing the existing assets to continue offering attractive student accommodation in a competitive market.”

Mark Allnutt, senior managing director for Europe at Greystar, said the latest acquisition adds to Greystar’s portfolio of over 120,000 student beds globally. 

“We have been active investors, developers and managers of student housing in the UK since 2013, through our ownership in IQ until 2020, Chapter Living and the recently launched Canvas brand.

“GIC are one of our most important global investment partners and we are excited to extend our partnership to the UK and in student housing, which given the fundamentals, is one of our highest conviction investment strategies globally,” Allnutt said.

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