Student Accommodation

The student accommodation sector is proving to be one of the busiest areas of the year with two major portfolios on the block and international capital circling for more opportunities.

Plans to convert the old Geelong Advertiser building for student accommodation will provide a boost for the resurrection of the city centre, a local commercial real estate agent says.

The home of the Geelong Advertiser for more than 60 years is set to become new digs for the city’s university students.

The Australian arm of student accommodation group Urbanest has been put on the block by US pension fund Washington State Investment Board for more than $2 billion in the country’s largest ever offer in the maturing property sector.

The love affair with real estate is ingrained into the Australian psyche. You can touch it, see it, drive past it and improve it. But with home prices falling, policy questions over tax incentives and less availability of credit, perhaps the love affair with residential property investment is over. So what does this mean for commercial real estate?

After ditching the idea of a “flotel”, the University of Tasmania will repurpose the old Commerce Building at the Sandy Bay campus as it scrambles to find enough accommodation for students.

Scape Student Living is capitalising on a surge in international and local students in Queensland by opening its Toowong development in Brisbane almost six months early, in time for the start of the 2019 academic year.

A hotel in Hobart’s CBD will be transformed into student accommodation after the budget travellers’ favourite was bought by the University of Tasmania for an undisclosed sum.

Hobart City councillor Holly Ewin has called on the University of Tasmania to prioritise students already living in residential accommodation for rooms in Hobart next year.