Ascott Residence Trust secures third student housing asset

Ascott Residence Trust (ART) has plans to acquire a freehold 1,005-bed student accommodation asset in Texas for $70 million, its third student housing investment within a span of seven months.

One of the newest student accommodation properties in the area, Wildwood Lubbock is a cottage-style property which serves more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students from Texas Tech University (TTU). The accretive acquisition will increase ART’s pro forma FY 2020 distribution per stapled security by approximately 1.5 percent. The EBITDA yield is expected to be 5.1 percent.

Beh Siew Kim, CEO of Ascott Residence Trust Management Ltd. and Ascott Business Trust Management Pte. Ltd. (the managers of ART), said, “The acquisition of our third student accommodation asset is in line with ART’s strategy to acquire assets with longer length of stay and diversify our portfolio from traditional hospitality assets, further increasing ART’s resilience and stable income. Leases