Australia: Scape, Australia’s biggest PBSA owner and operator, has launched a AUS$1.5-billion fund to deliver 10,000 BTR apartments by 2030.
Scape Australia‘s long-term investment partners APG Asset Management and Bouwinvest will finance a joint venture, subject to regulatory approval, which will develop new facilities and acquire existing assets.
Scape’s chief executive Anouk Darling said the as yet unnamed joint venture would focus on developing new urban, transport-oriented rent-to-live assets.
“Like with any fund, and certainly with build-to-rent, we obviously want to deliver scale. So we’ll be looking at our own developments as well as potentially acquiring existing assets, if it makes sense, although those assets will ideally be big build-to-rent assets. We don’t have any appetite necessarily to buy build-to-sell stock and then try to retrofit it,” she said.
Australia’s BTR sector has been boosted by new government incentives to encourage investment, including halving the withholding tax rate imposed on foreign investors in managed investment trusts to 15 per cent.
Sydney and Melbourne will be the primary locations for the fund, but Darling said: “We will look at other cities but obviously we’ll follow the demand and while there is under-supply everywhere, it makes sense to fit our investment thesis close to transport interchanges, key demand and access.”
Bouwinvest director of Asia-Pacific investments Robert Koot said: “Via this new joint venture we are now broadening the exposure of our clients and further diversifying their allocation in Australia. Scape and APG are well-known to us and are excellent partners to enter this market.”
APG head of Asia Pacific real estate Graeme Torre said the JV is “fully aligned with one of the building blocks of our real estate strategy—urbanisation, where among other things, we look to address important issues such as housing affordability”.
Scape manages more than 33 operational assets across the country with around 16,300 apartments. A further 12 purpose-built student housing and urban living facilities are under development, which will add another 10,000 apartments. The company has acquired 22 major development sites since 2015.
“Our ambition is to democratise the rental market by leveraging the operational scale we have already from the students and delivering really intelligent and inspired design environments at value,” Darling said. “In terms of the affordability factor it will be at market, but with I guess the added environments, because we’ve already got a scaled offering, we know how to deliver it, we know how to operate it, and we know what the community wants.”
