Crosslane Property Group has signed a joint venture with Harrison Street Real Estate Capital to develop four new student housing developments across the UK with a gross development value of £125 mln (€142 mln).
The new purpose-built student housing developments are located in Leeds, Coventry, Portsmouth and Swansea and will provide a combined 1,294 beds.
Investec Structured Property Finance is providing £59 mln of debt financing for three of the development assets (Coventry, Portsmouth and Swansea).
The Leeds development is already under construction and will be complete by September 2018 for the start of the 2018/19 academic year, with the remaining three schemes to be delivered for the 2019/20 academic year.
Prime Student Living, the student accommodation lettings and operational management arm of Crosslane, will manage the letting of the projects and will continue to manage the operational buildings once delivered.
In addition, the company said it is planning to exchange contracts on a 250-bed development in Cambridge in the coming weeks.
'The level of transactions in 2017, both as individual assets and portfolios, demonstrates continued investment appetite for UK student accommodation as the supply/demand fundamentals persist. The quality of new development assets in the market and the level of interest they are attracting demonstrate the continued positive sentiment in investing in student accommodation,' said Andy Whatson, the newly-appointed CEO of Crosslane Property Group UK, that includes the group's student housing development business and its student housing lettings and management business.
Whatson has worked for over 18 years in purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA), joining Crosslane in 2010 where he was tasked with building the development arm of Crosslane Student Developments and growing the UK PBSA development pipeline, becoming a director in 2012.
The announcement comes within days of Chicago-based private investor Harrison Street's new joint venture with UK student accommodation provider Uliving.
Daniel Gorzawski, managing director and head of Europe, at Harrison Street, commented: 'The UK has a large and growing student population and is one of the most attractive, dynamic markets for higher education across the globe.'
