MHN’s February 2020 Must-Reads
Catch up on our most important stories, interviews and rankings for last month.
New York took center stage in real estate news in February, following the state’s rule to outlaw rental broker fees and a state court’s order to temporarily halt it. Less than a week later, New York City’s Comptroller Scott Stringer proposed a Tenants Bill of Rights for renters in the city. A new Corcoran report showed that Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s average rents continued to increase. In Manhattan, a partnership between Pebb Capital and TriArch Real Estate Group sold a 175-bed trophy student housing asset in Greenwich Village for more than $100 million. And in Brooklyn, nonprofit developer The BRP Cos. topped off its 255-unit affordable housing community in the Flatbush neighborhood, while All Year Management debuted the 1.2 million-square-foot Denizen Bushwick.
This February was also marked by a series of high-profile mergers and acquisitions or expansions, including Amherst Residential’s merger agreement to buy Front Yard Residential in a $2.3 billion deal, and Blackstone’s deal to acquire UK’s iQ Student Accommodation from Goldman Sachs and Wellcome Trust for a record-breaking $6 billion. Earlier last month, Blackstone also bought back a multifamily portfolio in Japan from the Chinese insurance giant Anbang Group for $2.8 billion, in the country’s largest property transaction to date. In the U.S., Cushman & Wakefield entered into an agreement to purchase Dallas-based Pinnacle Property Management Services. And in Canada, Starlight Investment teamed up with KingSett Capital to offer to buy the country’s third-largest listed multifamily REIT for $3.6 billion.
Student housing continued to make the headlines in terms of both development and investments, even as panelists at this year’s CampusConnex conference argued that the sector faces choppy waters as a result of oversupply and demographic headwinds. In Dublin, Global Student Accommodation Group acquired five purpose-built communities totaling some 2,000 beds for $440.2 million. In Latin America, CA Ventures is planning to invest $325 million in new, ground-up developments in three Mexican cities—Merida, Mexico City and Monterrey. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Holder Properties is working on a 719-bed community near the Auburn University campus, expected to come online next fall. And Bahrain’s Investcorp teamed up with The Preiss Co. to purchase a 525-bed asset catering to students at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Here are MHN’s must-reads for last month:
