Harrison Street Sells Student Housing Portfolio for Nearly $900M

Student housing owner and operator The Scion Group and an undisclosed buyer have purchased a student housing portfolio from investment management firm Harrison Street for $893 million.

Scion, which owns about 92,000 beds across 35 states, will acquire 14 student housing assets near 13 different universities, including the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Texas A&M University in College Station and the University of Missouri in Columbia, according to Harrison Street.

Harrison Street declined to identify the 10 other universities involved in the portfolio.

“The complexity of this portfolio disposition demonstrates not only the heightened demand for student housing but also our extensive experience of acquiring/developing individual assets at leading universities, enhancing operational performance and executing on portfolio sales at scale,” Harrison Street CEO Christopher Merrill said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Scion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harrison Street, which has invested over $22 billion across 410 properties totaling more than 222,000 beds in North America and Europe, is “on pace to close over $4 billion of dispositions” this year across 80 assets, said Ben Mohns, the firm’s head of asset management.

The firm has also sold 212 student housing properties for a total of more than $8.8 billion since it began operations in 2005, the company said.

The deal comes after Scion secured a $380 million credit facility in February for its joint venture Scion Student Communities to refinance 11 off-campus student housing properties, as Commercial Observer previously reported. Most of those properties were at campuses in the Southern U.S.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.