Macquarie AM Buying Two Europe Student Housing Operators to Create 12,000-Bed Platform

Macquarie Asset Management is placing a bet on purpose-built student accommodation in Europe, with the Australian firm having agreed to acquire and combine two specialist platforms in the red-hot asset class.

The merger of BaseStack Living and Milestone will create a vertically integrated specialist PBSA platform managing more than 12,000 beds across Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Denmark, Macquarie Asset Management said Monday in a release.

No financial terms were disclosed, but BaseStack owner Justin Hamer is expected to remain as a shareholder alongside Macquarie Asset Management and serve as CEO of the supersized platform. The deal comes after Savills reported last month that student housing had overtaken multi-family as the top target of investors in European operational real estate.

“Combining these complementary businesses creates a solid cornerstone on which to build a sector-specialist platform that will own, develop, operate and manage capital on behalf of its clients,” said Brendan Jones, head of real estate in EMEA at Macquarie Asset Management. “Over time we expect to scale the offering across major European markets, which will help to alleviate pressure on the residential rental market and provide more specialised and affordable housing options for students.”

Market’s Early Days

Industry veteran Hamer co-founded Basecamp Student, a platform with locations in Germany, Poland, Denmark and Sweden that was ultimately sold to Belgium’s Xior Student Housing in 2022 as part of a deal valued at €1 billion (now $1.2 billion).

Macquarie’s acquisition and merger of BaseStack and Milestone comes at a time when the PBSA market in Europe remains at an early stage, according to Hamer, with the sector buoyed by strong growth and increased institutional investor participation.

The Sydney-based firm plans to scale the combined platform across key European cities to alleviate pressure on the residential rental market and provide more specialised and affordable housing options for students.

“There is a fundamental and critical undersupply of suitable accommodation for students across all major European cities with less than one bed per 10 full-time students,” Hamer said. “We are thrilled to partner with Macquarie Asset Management to both buy and build new purpose-built and professionally managed student housing to tackle this investment opportunity.”

Savills polled investors with nearly €720 billion in European real estate assets under management and found that PBSA was a top priority among 62 percent of respondents, roughly in line with 63 percent a year earlier, while multi-family had slid from 84 percent in 2024 to 57 percent in the recent survey.

“As the most mature subsectors in living, we would expect to see European PBSA and multi-family anchor institutional OpRE portfolios — especially in a countercyclical macroeconomic environment,” said Harry de Ferry Foster, UK head at Savills Investment Management.

Specialist Strategy

Macquarie Asset Management described its PBSA splash as part of a real estate strategy of investing in and partnering with specialist operators to create opportunities in difficult-to-access sectors.

The firm backs Asia-focused developer Unified Industrial, which in March announced plans to acquire the property and fund management business of SGX-listed Boustead Singapore to create a new platform with $3.5 billion in assets under management across Japan, China, Singapore and Vietnam.

Closer to home, Macquarie Asset Management has lent financial muscle to Local Residential, a Melbourne-based build-to-rent platform with an asset pipeline of more than A$1.34 billion.