New Partnership Makes $500M Student Housing Buy

Mike Peter is the president and CEO of Campus Advantage.

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles-based Saban Real Estate and Austin-based Campus Advantage have formed a new partnership to acquire a massive 19-property student-housing portfolio. The new partnership purchased the 12,083-unit portfolio for $508 million from American Campus Communities. The 19 properties are near major universities, including Penn State University, Michigan State University, Louisiana State University, University of Missouri, University of Indiana, University of South Carolina, University of Alabama, Florida State University, University of Alabama-Birmingham, East Carolina University and Western Michigan University.

For Campus Advantage, this acquisition was all about timing. The investor recently disposed of another portfolio that it owned with CalSTRS, and wanted to recycle the capital. “This was a fantastic opportunity to recycle capital from recent dispositions that we went through with another capital partner of ours,” Mike Peter, president and CEO of Campus Advantage, tells GlobeSt.com. “We sold a number of assets in September, and we were able to roll that capital forward and recycle it into these assets. That made this transaction an incredible timing opportunity.” Campus Advantage owned the portfolio for 10 years with CalSTRS, and Peter says that it was time to “harvest the investments.”