This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
GLOBAL Student Accommodation has completed $200 million in refinancing three assets in its Australian portfolio with Aareal Bank.
The transaction includes Global Student Accommodation’s (GSA) Yugo Adelaide City, Yugo Perth City, and University Square, Melbourne.
The properties are managed by Yugo, GSA’s global operating partner, and are currently in strong demand from both domestic and international students, due to their close proximity to universities and their amenity spaces.
The recently completed Yugo Adelaide City is a 725-bed property and one of the tallest buildings in the city, sitting directly opposite the Universities of Adelaide and South Australia’s City East Campus.
While Yugo Perth City won the Residential Architecture Award 2019 for Purpose Built Student Accommodation in Western Australia.
With University Square housing more than 340 students in Melbourne, sitting within close proximity to the University of Melbourne.
“This is an important transaction for GSA in Australia, with the student housing sector in the region demonstrating incredibly strong fundamentals and potential growth opportunities,” said John Jacobs, global head of capital markets at GSA.
“Consolidating our relationship with Aareal Bank is testament to our sector specific expertise as a student housing developer and asset manager with a strong track record of delivering robust returns to our investors.”
“We are delighted to continue to support GSA in Australia. This latest transaction reflects the depth of the relationship between our businesses and Aareal Bank’s position as a strong sponsor in the student housing space,” said Thomas Adaemmer, head of Asia Pacific at Aareal Bank.
The student housing market has rebounded from the challenges of the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 711,000 international students enrolled in Australian universities for the period January to July 2023, up 34% on the previous year.
As the sector recovers, GPT recently announced it was expanding its partnership with QuadReal Property Group, to invest in the Australia and New Zealand student accommodation market.
While Australia’s largest owner and operator of purpose-built student accommodation, Scape, in October converted a $1.4 billion loan into a sustainability-linked loan, in a first for the sector.
GSA now has over 2,000 beds across Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide, since it first entered the Australian market in 2016.
