GIC Ups Bets on Japan Residential with $500M Fund Managed by Hillhouse’s Samty

Singapore’s GIC is adding nearly 2,000 homes to its Japanese residential holdings through an investment in a multi-family investment fund managed by Hillhouse Investment Management’s Samty Holdings unit.

Samty, which Hillhouse acquired in a $1.1 billion deal completed in January this year, announced on Monday that it has reached a final closing on approximately $500 million in capital for a Japan residential strategy through a partnership with a sovereign wealth fund, which was not identified. The fund is seeded with an initial portfolio of 16 residential properties located primarily in Tokyo and Osaka. 

Market sources in Tokyo who spoke with Mingtiandi tagged the sovereign backer as GIC, with the $900 billion investor having purchased 30 Japanese multi-family properties from Samty in a pair of deals revealed in September this year. 

“The fund marks another significant milestone in our company’s continued transformation,” Yasuhiro Ogawa, president and chief executive of Samty Holdings said in a statement. “Sustainable market factors are driving long-term growth potential in this asset class, and we have the resources and partnerships to make a real impact.”

GIC Adds More Japanese Apartments

The fund’s initial portfolio consists of 16 recently completed properties mainly in established neighbourhoods of Tokyo and Osaka, according to a joint statement by Samty, Hillhouse, Hillhouse’s Rava Partners real estate unit and Japan’s Daiwa Securities, which backed the Samty buyout. 

The properties, which were developed or sourced by Samty, contain 1,948 units with $200 million from the new fund allocated to acquiring the portfolio. Acting through Rava Partners, Hillhouse serves as general partner for the fund, with Samty taking a 10 percent equity stake in the venture, according to the announcement. 

In the September deals, Samty announced that it had sold JPY 49 billion (then $330 million) in Japanese residential properties to sovereign wealth funds through a pair of transactions. The sale involved a group of 22 properties and a second set of eight residential assets, with the combined portfolio said to be 70 percent located in Tokyo, Osaka and other major cities. 

Market sources identified the buyer of each set of properties as GIC, with the sovereign fund’s Japan residential deals with Samty having amassed 38 apartment houses and $830 million in investment over the past four months.

Also in September this year the sovereign fund acquired a set of 14 Japanese residential properties containing approximately 800 homes and five retail units through an investment mandate with German investment manager Patrizia, which had announced the investment vehicle in 2022 as a €1 billion (then $1.03 billion) venture. 

Rava on a Roll

The deal announced Monday appears to put a cap on what has been a busy year for Samty Holdings since the Japanese developer and asset manager was delisted from the Tokyo stock exchange in January following the buyout by Hillhouse, Rava and Daiwa Securities. 

“Since being privatized in January 2025, Samty has been strategically transforming into a fully integrated international real estate investment and asset management platform,” Samty and its partners said in Monday’s statement. 

In addition to the deals with GIC, in July the company announced that it had raised JPY 58 billion (then $391 million) for its first dedicated hotel fund with Samty acting as joint general partner in the vehicle alongside local real estate manager EastGate Group. 

The following month, Samty Residential Investment Corporation, a Tokyo-listed REIT managed by Samty Holdings, said that it was buying nine apartment buildings across Japan’s main island of Honshu for JPY 8.7 billion ($59 million) and discarding an equal number of ageing assets.

Then in September, Samty Residential Investment Corporation announced to the Tokyo Exchange that it would acquire a Yokohama apartment building for JPY 730 million ($5 million).

Just last month Samty and Rava said that they had agreed to acquire a majority interest in Australian student housing operator UniLodge, with market sources confirming a deal value of A$600 million ($391.3 million).