Alignvest Acquires Ontario Student Housing Portfolio
The student housing REIT acquired four properties totaling 446 units as part of its planned strategy to consolidate its presence in Canada.
1686 Main St. W. Image courtesy of Alignvest Student Housing
Alignvest Student Housing has announced the acquisition of a four-building student portfolio in Ontario, Canada. The firm declined to disclose the seller or price in the deal.
The acquisition is part of the student housing REIT’s planned consolidation of the student housing sector in Canada and will double the size of Alignvest’s assets, according to a press release from the company.
The properties are located at 333 and 339 King St. N. in Waterloo, 1686 Main St. W. in Hamilton and 1700 Simcoe St. N. in Oshawa, Ontario. The King Street North properties, King Street Tower I & II, consist of a 17-story building with 536 beds that is 100 percent occupied and a 21-story building with 419 beds that is also 100 percent occupied.
Both properties offer amenities including exercise facilities, game rooms, study rooms, conference rooms, a theatre room, rooftop patio with fire pit, tanning beds and saunas.
In Hamilton, the 1686 Main St. W property is a LEED platinum certified building serving McMaster University. Built in 2008, the property offers a mix of two- to five-bedroom units with a total of 449 beds in 107 units. The building is 100 percent occupied.
In Oshawa, the property located at 1700 Simcoe St. N. is a 6-story LEED Gold certified building that serves the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. The building offers 588 beds in 133 units with a mix of three- to five-bedroom configurations. Amenities at the building include a fitness center, study spaces, student lounges, game rooms and a yoga studio. The building is 95 percent occupied.
“We are extremely excited about the four institutional-grade assets—these properties geographically diversify our operations into new tier-1 university markets, provide significant operational upside to our investors, provide immediate scale for us to capitalize on synergies and accelerate our strategy of becoming the largest owner/operator of student housing assets in the country,” Jake Mandel, analyst at Alignvest, told Multi-Housing News.
In January, Alignvest entered the Canadian market with the $54.7 million acquisition of 1Eleven, a 224-unit, 357-bed student housing property in Ottawa, Ontario.
