Sydney, Australia, October 27, 2022 – Ivanhoé Cambridge, the global real estate firm, is committing close to AUD1bn to Scape Core Program. The venture holds the largest and pre-eminent student housing portfolio in Australia, with 27 buildings and over 13,000 beds, predominantly located in Sydney and Melbourne. Current investors in Scape Core Program are like-minded institutional global investors such as APG, Allianz, Bouwinvest and AXA.
The student housing sector in Australia is seeing a strong recovery this year, following full reopening of the international borders in February 2022. The number of international students applying for visas hit an all-time record in June. Strong demand for student housing has translated in high occupancy numbers with an attractive rental growth outlook.
Ivanhoé Cambridge is positive on the Australian student housing sector and Scape’s fully integrated residential-for-rent platform. In Australia, it has a keen interest in the residential sector and has made recent investments into the built-to-rent and disability housing space.
Ivanhoé Cambridge Co-Head of Asia Pacific, George Agethen said: “We are pleased to enter into this new strategic partnership with Scape in the Australian student housing sector. This investment allows us to participate in the institutionalization of the living sector in APAC and support the provision of well-managed, high-quality housing for students. The exposure to the Scape Core Program will diversify our APAC portfolio with defensive cashflows that are driven by the favourable demographics in the region and the demand for quality education in Australia.”
Scape Australia Group CEO and Managing Director, Stephen Gaitanos said: “We are excited to welcome Ivanhoé Cambridge as another high calibre global investor to our platform. This comes at a very exciting time with high international student enrolments and a recovery of the PBSA (Purpose-Built Student Accommodation) sector as education remains a centrepiece of Australia’s global services exports. Together with recent aggregations in Australia we expect to see more consolidation and growth opportunity both in the student accommodation market and the residential for rent sector more broadly.”