Mapletree Marketing $583M UK Student Housing Portfolio

Singapore’s Mapletree Investments has put up for sale a set of 24 UK purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) properties totaling 4,844 beds, as the Temasek Holdings-backed property firm continues to rejig its S$6.2 billion student accommodation portfolio.

The assets are owned by a Mapletree-sponsored closed-end private fund and are said to be worth £450 million ($583 million), according to UK media outlet Green Street News, which first reported the sale effort.

Mapletree, which bills itself as one of the largest owners of student housing in the UK with over 17,000 beds, pointed to the planned divestment as a way to get cash back to investors at the highest rates possible amid increasing investment activity in the UK’s PBSA market.

“While the student housing sector continues to be a core sector for Mapletree, there is a need to explore the divestment of these assets in the fund to realise returns for our investors,” Matt Walker, CEO of student housing for Mapletree, told Mingtiandi. “Given heightened investment activities in the United Kingdom’s student housing market and an increasingly accommodative macro-economic environment, we have launched the sale process with a view to maximise returns for our fund investors.”

Buying and Selling

The assets are situated in London, Lincoln, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester and Aberystwyth, with most of those locations home to universities under the UK’s Russell Group association of prestigious educational institutions.

Mapletree is launching the sale effort six months after the company in April spent £1 billion to acquire 31 PBSA assets totaling 8,192 beds across the UK and Germany from Cuscaden Peak Investments, a joint venture the Singapore player formed with CapitaLand, since-criminally charged tycoon Ong Beng Seng and his Hotel Properties Ltd in 2021 to take over the property assets of Singapore Press Holdings.

Through that April deal, Mapletree expanded its student housing portfolio to over 33,000 beds across 47 cities in the UK, the US, Germany and Canada, representing total assets under management of S$6.2 billion.

“Mapletree continues to remain positive on the student housing sector in the UK and will continue to grow our investment and development portfolios in the market,” Walker said, with the developer and investment manager emphasising that the segment remains central to its strategy.

In June, Mapletree sold a 894-bed student housing property in North Carolina to US residential operator and investment manager Timberline Real Estate Ventures for a reported $91 million. That asset had been held under the Mapletree Global Student Accommodation Private Trust, the firm’s sole PBSA-dedicated vehicle. Mapletree in 2017 raised $535 million for the fund, which at the time owned properties in the UK and US valued at $1.3 billion.

In 2021, the company followed up with a purchase of four PBSA assets under the Vita Student brand in Nottingham, Leeds, Exeter and Bristol.

In 2022, Mapletree was said to be picking banks for a Singapore-listed REIT of its student accommodation assets. Despite widespread media reports of a potential IPO, no such REIT listing has occurred to date.

Mapletree suffered its first loss in over two decades in the fiscal year ended 31 March, with the company attributing the S$656.3 million shortfall to revaluation losses mainly from commercial properties in Western markets.

In addition to PBSA, the company manages a portfolio of data centre, industrial, logistics, mixed-use, office, residential, and retail assets across 13 markets in Asia Pacific, North America, and Europe.

Singaporean Investors Target UK PBSA

Mapletree’s sale effort comes as Singaporean investors have continued to target UK’s PBSA sector, with rents having risen by an average of 8.02 percent for the 2023-2024 academic year, while the supply of new beds expanded by just 1 percent annually over the past two years, according to a report last year from Cushman & Wakefield.

In August, Singapore’s Far East Orchard launched its maiden private fund focused on the UK PBSA sector with commitments totalling £70 million at first closing. The vehicle is targeting an aggregate commitment of £100 million and has been seeded with a development site in Glasgow acquired by the company in March.

In July, Q Investment Partners formed a £100 million UK student housing joint venture with Malaysian builder Gamuda Land to develop a 299-bed project in southeast London, marking the Singapore-based private equity shop’s 11th UK asset and first in London. That deal came after Q Investment Partners in 2023 formed a JV with Singapore-based Soilbuild Group for a £200 million UK student housing platform which was seeded with two development projects in York and Newcastle.

In December 2022, a joint venture of Singaporean sovereign fund GIC and US residential developer Greystar acquired Student Roost, the UK’s third largest PBSA provider from a private fund of Brookfield. That same month, Singaporean builder City Developments Ltd beefed up its UK student housing portfolio with the acquisition of five properties for £215 million.