Campus Apartments and Clarion Form Student Housing Fund

Campus Apartments and Clarion Partners have closed Campus-Clarion Student Housing Partners, a close-end investment vehicle.

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

New York—Campus Apartments, a privately held student housing specialist, and Clarion Partners, a real estate investment manager, have closed Campus-Clarion Student Housing Partners LP, a close-end investment vehicle. It closed with $402.9 million in equity commitments from various domestic and international investors, predominately institutional.

The fund will seek investments in student housing and university-related real estate throughout the United States, mainly pursuing a value-add strategy. Campus and Clarion say that investments will run the gamut in the property type, through the acquisition and development of both on- and off-campus projects.

Also according to the two companies, the fund will be able to exercise about $1.2 billion in buying power, which would make it the largest student housing fund by a vertically integrated manager yet created. Campus Apartments and Clarion Partners are co-general partners for the fund.

Considering demographics and projected growth in the number of university students, demand for student housing is anticipated to grow in the next decades, and development of new units is rising to meet the demand. Colliers International reports that nationwide, 6,934 new student housing units came on line in 2014, up from 6,322 in 2013, which was quite far up from 2012, when only 3,634 were completed. More than 10,000 new units are on the drawing boards.

Campus Apartments currently has more than $2 billion worth of assets under management with more than 28,000 beds in 25 states. With $33 billion in total assets under management, Clarion Partners is involved with real estate deals for more than 250 domestic and international institutional investors.