Nuveen has teamed up with student accommodation specialist GSA to buy a €540M (£450M) portfolio of French student housing as interest in the student sector from investors and lenders continues.

Nuveen, on behalf of U.S. pension fund parent company TIAA, and GSA have bought the YouFirst Campus business from French REIT Gecina, in the first move for either firm in the French student sector.

The portfolio comprises more than 3,600 beds across 18 operational assets in Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Paris. It also includes four development sites in Paris.

Nuveen will act as investment adviser to the joint venture, with GSA as the asset manager. The properties will be operated by GSA’s global partner Yugo.

Separately, lenders from across the world have financed three UK student investment and development debt transactions totalling more than £250M.

In the largest, Emirates NBD and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank teamed up to provide a £140M loan to fund the redevelopment of a student accommodation block in Paddington, west London.

Union Property bought Lillian Pension Hall from the University of London in 2022 and is creating a new scheme with 353 beds.

In Bristol, Maslow Capital will provide a £75.5M loan to fund the development of a 399-bed scheme being built by a joint venture between TPG Angelo Gordon and Melburg Capital. The scheme is maintaining the original structure of an office block on the site, reducing embodied carbon by 33% compared to building a new structure from scratch.

In Edinburgh, Vita Group secured a £52M loan from Puma Property Finance to fund the construction of a new 267-bed scheme on a brownfield regeneration site in the city.

More than £3B has already been spent on UK student accommodation this year, according to data from Knight Frank, well ahead of the £1.3B spent in 2023.