Greystar Student Housing Growth and Income Fund (GEdR), Greystar Realty Partners’ newly formed perpetual-life vehicle, has agreed to acquire Education Realty Trust for $4.6 billion.
EdR is an owner, developer and manager of collegiate housing in the United States with a portfolio comprising approximately 45,000 beds serving 47 universities in 26 states. This strategic transaction significantly expands Greystar’s global student housing footprint, which includes portfolios of scale in London and Spain.
The transaction, which is currently expected to close in the second half of 2018, is subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of EdR’s stockholders, who will vote on the transaction at a special meeting on a date to be announced.
In conjunction with this transaction, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) formed a joint venture with GEdR to acquire a portion of EDR’s portfolio, consisting of approximately 10,500 beds across 20 assets, for $1.2 billion.
The portfolio includes student housing assets adjacent to top-tier universities that have demonstrated strong enrollment growth, such as University of California Berkeley, University of California Riverside, University of Virginia, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, University of Colorado Boulder and Penn State. The portfolio is on average eight years old and has consistently maintained occupancy rates over 97 percent. The Greystar/EdR team will continue to manage the assets.
Following this transaction, Greystar will be the second-largest institutional owner and manager of student housing in the United States, in addition to Greystar’s global position as the largest student housing operator in Spain and the third-largest owner of student housing assets in the United Kingdom.
BREIT is a perpetual-life, monthly NAV REIT that, pro forma for this transaction, will own an approximately $10 billion portfolio of stabilized, income-generating real estate concentrated in U.S. markets with attractive growth as well as real estate debt securities.
