BLUE SKY'S $1 BILLION JOINT VENTURE WITH GOLDMAN SACHS

BLUE Sky Private Real Estate and global investment firm Goldman Sachs have teamed up to form a $1 billion student accommodation joint venture.

The two companies aim to build a portfolio of 5,000 to 10,000 purpose built student accommodation beds across Australia and New Zealand, in what they describe as a heavily undersupplied market relative to other global student markets including the US and UK.

Head of Blue Sky Private Real Estate Investing Adam Vaggelas says the partnership is a key milestone in the company's strategy to build a platform of quality, well located and affordable student accommodation assets.

"Education is Australia's largest non-resource export industry, worth in excess of $18 billion per annum and growing," says Vaggelas.

"The ability to scale further into this domestic thematic, in part due to region's proximity to a rapidly expanding Asian middle class, is a key focus for the partnership."

Blue Sky's investment strategy was formulated by Vaggelas and real estate executive Nick Singleton in 2014.

The fund managers and their team have since grown the student accommodation development pipeline to more than 3,000 beds across the country.

The Blue Sky partnership is Goldman Sachs' entry into the Australian student market, however the global investment firm has been active in the European student market for a number of years.

Earlier this year Goldman Sachs announced a $3.8 billion (£2 billion) joint venture to form the Vero Group consisting of approximately 600 staff managing almost 25,000 student beds across the UK.

Entities owned by Goldman Sachs and funds managed by Blue Sky will each own 50 per cent of future projects developed under the Australian joint venture.

Blue Sky Private Real Estate is a subsidiary of ASX-listed Blue Sky Alternative Investments Limited (ASX:BLA).