Goldman, Blue Sky buy Australia student accommodation group

According to a statement, the acquisition is expected to be built into a portfolio of 5,000-10,000 purpose-built student accommodation beds over the next few years.

"Education is Australia's largest non-resource export industry, worth in excess of $18 billion per annum and growing," Adam Vaggelas, head of Blue Sky Private Real Estate, said. "The ability to scale further into this domestic thematic, in part due to the region's proximity to a rapidly expanding Asian middle class, is a key focus for the partnership."

The joint venture's stake in The Pad was obtained from Telopea Capital executives Stephen Gaitanos and Craig Carracher and is understood to value in hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The Pad has a long history as a specialist student accommodation operator and Blue Sky is already working closely with the team on multiple sites," Vaggelas told The Australian Financial Review. "Their expertise, combined with the newly formed Blue Sky and Goldman Sachs joint venture takes us a step closer to creating a market-leading platform to service the undersupplied student accommodation market in Australia."

The Pad claims provides accommodation to all major universities and education groups in Brisbane. It is estimated to manage housing for almost 2,000 students across a national market where some 1.2 million students have access to only 54,000 purpose-built bedrooms.

Prior to the acquisition, Blue Sky's student housing portfolio in Australia totaled 2,200 beds and was estimated to be worth $350 million. Other recent investments by the firm in the country's education space have included the purchase of a minority stake in primary school mathematics tuition provider Origo Education.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Real estate
• Buyouts
• Australia
• Goldman Sachs
• Blue Sky Private Equity
• Education