Dive Brief:

• Last week, Harrison Street sold a U.S. student housing portfolio totaling 14 communities to The Scion Group and a major institutional investor for $893 million, according to a news release.
• The 8,724-bed portfolio is located across 11 states and 13 universities, including the University of Arkansas, Texas A&M and the University of Missouri. Harrison Street, a Chicago-based investment management firm, bought the assets over the last decade across eight fund vehicles.
• With the acquisition, Chicago-based Scion Group enters six new markets and enhances its position as the largest owner-operator of student housing globally. The company owns and operates 140 communities in 82 campus markets across 35 states.

Dive Insight:

Since its founding in 2005, Harrison Street has invested over $22 billion across 410 student properties, totaling more than 222,000 beds throughout North America and Europe. The firm has sold 212 student housing properties for a gross value of over $8.8 billion. 

In the press release announcing the Scion deal, Christopher Merrill, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Harrison Street, said that the sale showed strong investor interest in alternative real estate sectors.

Harrison Street is on pace to close more than $4 billion of dispositions this year from nine distinct funds and over 80 assets across its student, senior, healthcare, storage, digital and infrastructure verticals, Ben Mohns, head of asset management for North America, said in the release.

Scion now has over $10 billion of assets under management and nearly 1,800 team members. “This transaction marks a significant step in Scion’s strategic growth,” Avi Lewittes, chief investment officer for Scion, said in a separate release issued by his company.

While sizable, the Harrison Street-Scion deal isn’t the largest student housing transaction of the year. In April, KKR and Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust announced that funds managed by KKR would acquire a portfolio of 19 purpose-built student housing properties from BREIT for approximately $1.64 billion. 

“Student housing is a sector that we have long-term conviction in,” Justin Pattner, partner at KKR and head of real estate equity in the Americas, said in the news release.

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