UK: APG, Scape Launch New PBSA JV Seeded with £250m Project

Student housing group, Scape, and Dutch pension fund manager, APG, have teamed up again to establish a new £500 million UK student housing joint venture.

Lately, Scape has been expanding into Urban City Living apartments. Its partnership with APG is expected to help its UK expansion, which will bring the shared living concept to a wider market. 

This new joint venture has been seeded with 1000 PBSA beds in London and South-East England. Scape currently has over 30,000 PBSA beds with development across the UK, the USA and Australia, and in the upcoming years, its goal is to grow to over £2 billion. 

In the UK, Scape has 403 beds in Guildford and 555 beds in Brighton as well as 298 beds in Dublin, Ireland. Funds from APG will support Scape to add more than 10,000 beds in the UK, including a 788-bed development in Canada Water, London over the next five years.

Scape Founder and Chairman, Nigel Taee, said: “Our student proposition is just the beginning for Scape. We have ambitious plans for the next few years as we develop the Scape offering and start to move into new territories.”

“We will continue to develop this both in the UK and globally whilst also extending our proposition to provide quality accommodation for city dwellers with Scape Living,” he added.

On the other hand, APG head of European real estate, Robert-Jan Foortse, declared: “It is our belief that the UK student and the UK housing market offer very compelling investment opportunities that provide our clients with long term stable returns”

APG and Scape have an existing and ongoing student accommodation partnership with Allianz Real Estate in Australia. Together, they bought Urbanest’s A$2 billion student housing portfolio. 

Foortse said they are pleased to enhance the relationship with Scape that started with APG as founding investors of the Australian Scape joint venture. 

He added: “We look forward to building on this global partnership with Scape by supporting its UK expansion.”

Similarly, Scape’s Co-Founder and CEO, Tom Ward, announced: “We’re delighted to be partnering with APG on the next stage of the roll-out of the UK business”