Unite Students Signs £75m Oxford Brookes Development Deal
Date: December 2017
Location: Oxford, UK – Oxford Brookes University
Name: Unite Student Accommodation
No. of Keys: 885 beds
Seller: ??
Buyer: Unite Students has exchanged contracts on a development site in Oxford.
It has, in parallel, agreed commercial terms with Oxford Brookes University for a 25-year nominations agreement covering the site, which will extend its partnership with Unite to 1,350 beds.
Planning consent for the development has been granted subsequent to exchange.
The new development is expected to provide 885 new beds and will be delivered for the 2019/20 academic year with total development costs expected to be around £75m.
Unite are market leaders in this new sector of the hotel/hostel/student sector, headed up by Richard Smith, CEO.
Price: £75m plus development cost
Price per Key: around £100k per bed
THPT says; Although this is not a sector that we deal in, we have been following the progress of Unite, iQ, Liberty Living, The Student Housing Co. and others – it even has a name and an acronym, PBSA – Purpose Built Student Accommodation. Knight Frank have a good market review PDF out.
The biggest single Institutional investor was CPPIB who acquired both the Liberty Living platform and the Student Castle portfolio. Other key institutional investors in 2015 included Henderson Global Investors, Aviva, BlackRock, LaSalle Investment Management and M & G with a combined £1.92bn of investment. This wave of Institutional investment has now polarised
the market such that assets that fail to meet Institutional specification have much reduced liquidity.
First Seen: Europe Real Estate