Harrison Street Plots Growth With Easterly Partnership
Easterly's brokerage arm will be exclusive distributor for all Harrison's related funds.
Harrison Street and Easterly Asset Management have announced the formation of a partnership. The collaboration between the firms will provide investment services in alternative real assets, focusing on both the multifamily and commercial sectors.
Easterly Securities, Easterly’s brokerage arm, will act as exclusive distributor for all of Harrison Street’s related strategies for the U.S. private wealth space, whose real estate investments total upwards of $67 billion of student housing, senior housing, build-to-rent, self-storage and life sciences assets, as well as investments in utilities and digital and social infrastructure.
In its new distribution role, Easterly will use its in-house distribution team, and intends to leverage existing relationships with banks, family offices, investment advisors and brokers to grow Harrison Street’s holdings and client base.
Much of the new partnership’s focus is towards sectors exhibiting “quality and resilience”, a spokesperson for Harrison Street told Multi-Housing News. The “ongoing supply-demand imbalance and demographic-driven tailwinds and projections for rental growth” are major considerations for the firm, which expressed optimism that student housing, senior housing and single-family build-to-rent properties would fare well in the coming months. Harrison Street has recently invested across all three asset classes. “These, combined with an uptick in demand among high-net-worth investors in private real estate, makes it an ideal time to announce this partnership and provide greater access to our investment strategies,” the spokesperson said.
Expanding horizons
Harrison Street, which has $56 billion in total assets under management and is active in the U.S., Canada and Europe, closed Fund VIII, its eighth opportunistic fund, at more than $2.5 billion in October of 2021. The fund has made significant investments in student housing.
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In January, Harrison Street sold Epoch Clemson, a 994-bed community serving Clemson University, in South Carolina. In December 2023, the firm, in a joint venture with Core Spaces, purchased Identity Eugene, a 686-bed community located near the University of Oregon’s flagship campus in Eugene. One month prior, the firm finished development of the first phase of Residential Village at the University of Washington Bothell, a 1,055-bed project that cost $160 million. For that development, the firm partnered with Capstone Development Partners.
