A UK student housing partnership made up of Greystar Real Estate Partners, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) and Allianz Real Estate has bought a £160m (€185.3m) London asset.
The joint venture acquired the 458-bedroom Paul St. East purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) scheme in Shoreditch from Apache Capital Partners.
Canada’s C$153bn (€99bn) pension investment manager and Greystar joined forces in 2014 to create the Chapter brand. In June last year, Allianz joined Greystar and PSP Investments’ UK student housing partnership with a £350m equity investment.
Greystar said the latest acquisition will enable the joint venture to further realise the potential of the Chapter brand, including its goal of delivering 10,000 student beds within five years.
Troy Tomasik, Greystar managing director of investments in the UK and Ireland, said: “Greystar is excited to be expanding the Chapter portfolio with another high-quality student accommodation asset in London – which remains the premier global city for international students with its world-class universities and higher education institutions.
“We strongly believe that Paul St. East has significant long-term potential through integrating the asset with our Chapter brand to offer students the exceptional services and experiential living enjoyed at Greystar’s other Chapter residences.”
The Paul St. East project was originally acquired from Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency, and included 43,000sqft of offices sold to Helical in 2015.
Apache Capital said it plans to reinvest funds from the deal into its own build-to-rent pipeline with Moda Living, the UK multifamily platform with 6,500 apartments across nine cities.
John Dunkerley, CEO at Apache Capital Partners, said: “The sale price of Paul St. East not only underlines the continued attractiveness of UK PBSA to institutional investors and the growing maturity of the sector as an asset class but also shows the benefit of investing heavily in creating aspirational lifestyles for our residents through marketing, amenity provision and high-quality service.
“By being an early mover in to UK PBSA and creating a genuinely premium product, we have delivered exceptional returns for our investors, which further underpins our rationale behind our current strategy with Moda Living in build-to-rent, where we are creating one of the largest branded portfolios with a similar focus on prime locations and high-quality amenity and services.”
