This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
GLOBAL student accommodation player GSA Group has re-entered to Australia and has unveiled plans to have 25,000 beds under management by 2025.
GSA first entered the Australian market in 2007 and founded the student accommodation brand Urbanest, which has investments across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. The company cashed out of the Urbanest business after creating a portfolio of over 4,000 beds.
The company has opened a new Sydney office. GSA Group Asia Pacific managing director Simon Loveridge said the student accommodation sector in Australia is now recognised as an exciting emerging institutional asset-grade real estate asset, which is supported, by attractive demand and supply fundamentals.
“We are delighted to announce the continued growth of our Asia Pacific business with the launch of our new Australian business. The UK student accommodation market saw record transaction levels last year with over US$7bn of assets transacted in the sector,” he added.
Loveridge said the chronic supply demand imbalance in the student accommodation sector in Australia would continue to worsen over the next 10 years as the government targets one million international students by 2025.
“In Australia’s key university cities, there is a significant undersupply of purpose built student accommodation representing only 10% of the total student accommodation market, despite an increasing number of operators entering the market.
“We see that Australia has all of the market fundamentals to develop into a more institutional grade asset class given the world leading universities, real estate market and the large and growing international student population,” Loveridge said.
Australian Property Journal
