Australian real estate investment manager Qualitas and its developer partner, Tim Gurner, have raised A$1.2bn (€771m) from a club of foreign institutions to launch an Australian build-to-rent (BTR) platform.
Back in December, Qualitas and Gurner formed a BTR venture with a plan to launch a fund to raise capital for the purchase of more sites for the portfolio.
The capital raise was oversubscribed by A$200m due to strong interest from these investors.
Mark Fischer, co-founder of Qualitas and global head of real estate, told IPE Real Assets that the platform already had four seed assets, which would produce 1,700 apartments for rent.
“We expect the buildings – one in Sydney and three in Melbourne – will be ready to take in renters in 2025,” he said.
The target was to build up a portfolio of around 5,000 apartments in the capital cities on Australia’s eastern seaboard over the next few years.
Fischer said that between Qualitas and Gurner, there was “enough runway” in terms of capital and access to development sites to achieve this target.
Fischer said he believed the BTR sector was aligned to the company’s focus on assets generating defensive and resilient cash flows.
Qualitas, which is in the throes of an initial public offering, is also currently raising capital for a billion-dollar private credit fund to finance build-to-rent projects with green credentials.
Fischer said the Qualitas BTR Impact Fund was currently deploying capital raised from cornerstone investors, and that it expected to complete its raising by the first quarter of next year.
“We are working with a number of institutions at the moment in their (investment) committee process to approve what we hope is the final piece to our capital raising,” he told IPE Real Assets.
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