Scape, Greystar, Colliers Spot Opportunities as Australia’s Living Sector Scales Up: MTD TV

A supply crunch, rising demand and easing cost pressures are pointing to opportunities in Australia’s build-to-rent and student housing markets, according to speakers from Scape, Greystar and Colliers who joined Mingtiandi’s 2025 APAC Residential Forum on Tuesday. Click here to view the full recording>>

A shortage of housing in Australia has given urgency to policy efforts to boost supply, with hopes that May’s federal election will provide clarity for builders keen to add to the national pipeline, the speakers told MTD TV viewers during the forum, which is sponsored by Yardi. At the same time, the rapidly developing rental housing scene Down Under offers a chance for institutions to assemble portfolios as the market scales up, they said.

Robert Papaleo, head of living for Australia at Colliers, noted that the nation is facing a shortfall on the order of 200,000 dwellings at a time of robust house price growth, rising rental rates and sub-1.5 percent vacancy. For developers eager to get involved but wary of the expense, the upside is that the consultancy expects construction costs to level off after steep increases in recent years.

“We are now starting to see much greater stabilisation in construction cost increases,” Papaleo said. “I’m not suggesting that they come all the way back in any way, but the rate of increase is now within the bands of what we’ve historically observed in the Australian market.”

Early Days in Rental Residential

For Greystar, which in November opened a 700-unit development in Melbourne as Australia’s largest built-to-rent property and the company’s first in the country, the nation’s rental residential sector feels like “very early days”, said Matt Woodland, who leads Australia investment management for the US apartment giant. He likened the market to what Greystar has experienced in Britain, another developed country with a budding rental culture poised for growth.

“What we’re starting to see is an evolution away from these luxury high-rise towers catering strictly to that higher end of the market, to try and build a product that caters to a broader set of residents, a bigger demand pool of people, not just that luxury high end,” Woodland said. “And that’s an evolution we’ve seen in the UK as well, as we’ve seen people start to shift towards lower-density communities from a height perspective.”

South Carolina-based Greystar, which entered Australia’s BTR market more than five years ago, is also expected to close next week on a A$1.6 billion ($1 billion) student housing acquisition, giving the group seven university-linked properties and a foothold in the country’s other red-hot living segment.

That arena of purpose-built student accommodation is currently dominated by Scape, which in January announced the conversion of its flagship PBSA vehicle into a A$6 billion ($3.8 billion) open-ended core fund that now boasts a 17,300-bed portfolio across 35 assets.

As Scape fund manager Ben Taylor explained, the fund was originally set up as a closed-end club of a few large investors with a strategy to participate in the consolidation of the sector. As the vehicle expanded via acquisitions of two large student housing portfolios and projects from Scape’s own pipeline, the investors grew supportive of converting to open-ended — not with an eye towards an exit, but rather because they wanted to maintain their exposure to the portfolio.

“They didn’t want to be subject to this looming liquidity date in 10 years where the end of the fund life was approaching,” Taylor told MTD TV. “So our investors were very supportive of converting it and going on that next phase. And what that’s done is opened up essentially an asset class and a portfolio that otherwise wouldn’t be available to smaller investors.”

Spotlight Interview Wednesday

The APAC Residential Forum continues Wednesday with a spotlight interview featuring two top executives from GreenFort Capital and Gaw Capital Partners, as they share insights on how emerging segments in Australia’s rental residential market can produce favourable returns.

GreenFort partner Adam Vaggelas and Gaw Capital president Kenny Gaw will discuss their pensioner housing joint venture, which is helping the GreenFort-managed Liven Communities platform grow its pipeline to address Queensland’s ageing population and influx of retirees.

After the interview portion, Mingtiandi’s team will moderate a live Q&A session in which viewers can quiz the speakers on their market outlooks and get direct insights from some of the region’s top experts in the rental housing space.