Mapletree To Wind Down Student Housing Fund After Investors Reject Extension Plan
Mapletree Investments is reportedly liquidating an underperforming student housing fund after an investor revolt.
The Singapore-based firm, which has more than $60B in assets under management, is planning to offload the assets in its Mapletree Global Student Accommodation Private Trust, Bloomberg reported. The move comes after more than 90% of investors in the fund rejected plans to extend its life.
The fund was launched in 2017 with a target 12% internal return rate and initially hit or exceeded targets before its aging properties and the global pandemic weighed down its performance. It stopped providing its biannual investor distributions after the middle of 2023, with Mapletree saying it needed to preserve cash for future expenditures in a high interest rate environment.
The IRR for the fund slipped to 1.1% by the end of last year, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The documents indicate that the fund now holds roughly $700M in assets and that investors are likely to take more than a 20% haircut when capital is returned.
Mapletree, a subsidiary of Singapore’s state-owned Temasek Holdings, didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday morning and declined a request to comment from Bloomberg.
At its peak, the Mapletree fund had a portfolio of 35 assets with over 14,000 beds spread across the UK and nine U.S. states. Mapletree took a roughly one-third stake in the fund when it launched and abstained from the latest votes about extending the fund’s life, Bloomberg reported.
Mapletree was looking to push the fund’s life beyond the end of the decade and redevelop or refurbish some aging properties. Fund investors had previously approved a three-year extension but roundly rejected the new proposed timeline.
The investment firm said last March that it managed $5.3B in student housing assets. Despite the lagging performance of the current fund, Mapletree is planning to launch a second UK student housing fund with at least $668M in capital, the company said in its annual report published in the middle of last year.
Student housing is growing in popularity among private capital fund managers, and MSCI tracked roughly $10B in U.S. student housing trades last year. Declining college enrollment and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and attacks on higher education have given some investors pause, but large firms are still chasing demand with new offerings.
Fortress Investment Group launched a fund earlier this month that is targeting baby boomers looking to invest in student housing, senior housing and multifamily properties. Investment giant Nuveen launched a joint venture in January that aims to pick up student housing in the UK.
Morgan Stanley teamed up with Global Student Accommodation in November to pay $1B for eight U.S. student housing assets that had been owned by Landmark Properties and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
