Alignvest Student Housing Update

by on November 21, 2024 with No Comments
ALIGNVEST STUDENT HOUSING REIT UNITHOLDERS OVERWHELMINGLY APPROVE COMBINATION WITH FORUM REAL ESTATE AND IMPACT FUND

Toronto, Ontario (November 21, 2024) – Alignvest Student Housing Inc. (“ASH”) is pleased to announce that the unitholders (“Unitholders”) of Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust (“ASH REIT”) overwhelmingly approved the proposed combination with Forum Real Estate Income and Impact Fund (“REIIF”), with over 99% of the votes cast on the Resolutions by all Unitholders (as described further below) voting in favour.

At the special meeting of Unitholders held yesterday (the “Meeting”), the resolutions (“Resolutions”) approving the previously announced combination transaction and other transactions (the “Transactions”) contemplated in the Combination Agreement between, among others, ASH REIT and REIIF dated October 11, 2024 (as amended, supplemented or modified from time to time, the “Combination Agreement”) and the related agreement for the acquisition of ASH by Forum Real Estate Income and Impact LP dated October 11, 2024 (as amended, supplemented or modified from time to time), as well as ancillary matters related thereto, were passed.

The Resolutions were approved by: (i) 99.03% of the votes cast on the Resolutions by all Unitholders present in person or represented by proxy and entitled to vote at the Meeting; and (ii) 98.62% of the votes cast on the Resolutions by Unitholders present in person or represented by proxy and entitled to vote as part of the “majority of the minority” approval.

 

Closing Timeline and Next Steps

The Transactions are currently targeted to close before the end of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions. Competition Bureau clearance has been received for the Transactions.

In anticipation of and in order to facilitate the closing, ASH REIT intends to suspend ordinary course distributions for the months of November and December 2024, and accordingly, Unitholders’ participation in the distribution reinvestment plan will also be suspended for the months of November and December 2024. The value of distributions not paid out will be reflected in the amount of cash and number of units of REIIF received by Unitholders in exchange for their units of ASH REIT (“ASH REIT Units”), which will be higher than if distributions were not suspended, as determined in accordance with the Combination Agreement.

Based on preliminary results, it is estimated that Unitholders who have elected to redeem more than their pro rata entitlement for cash by submitting a duly completed Cash Redemption Offer Election Form will have 100% of the ASH REIT Units that they tendered for redemption redeemed. Such Unitholders may limit the number of their ASH REIT Units redeemed for cash by contacting ASH REIT prior to 5:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on November 27, 2024. Unitholders who reduce the number of ASH REIT Units redeemed for cash under the cash election will receive additional units of REIIF at closing.

Redemption and transfer requests received by ASH after yesterday are not expected to be processed before closing, and therefore are not expected to be fulfilled. Unitholders are reminded that if they requested a transfer or redemption of ASH REIT Units after October 1, 2024 or plan to request a transfer or redemption prior to the closing date it may result in the Unitholder’s cash election in respect of those ASH REIT Units being invalidated.

 

About Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust

ASH REIT was launched in 2018 to consolidate the fragmented, institutional grade, purpose-built student accommodation real estate sector across Canada. Over the past seven years, ASH REIT has built a high-quality portfolio of 17 properties with 7,159 beds across seven university-focused markets.

ASH REIT is an unincorporated open-ended real estate investment trust formed under the laws of Ontario pursuant to a Declaration of Trust to own income-producing purpose-built student accommodations located in Canada. ASH REIT offers trust units on a continuous basis pursuant to an offering memorandum on a private placement basis by qualified dealers to investors resident in any province or territory of Canada who qualify as “accredited investors”. ASH REIT has made arrangements to offer the units through the investment fund order system, Fundserv.

For more information about Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust, please visit: www.alignveststudenthousing.com.

 

About Forum Real Estate Income and Impact Fund

REIIF invests principally in institutional-quality, multi-family rental apartments, purpose-built student accommodations and furnished rentals located in supply constrained markets in Canada. REIIF also strives to deliver a sector-leading impact and ESG-driven portfolio designed to enhance yields and total returns, with a focus on maintaining diversity and resiliency of income.

For information about REIIF, please visit: www.forumreiif.ca.

 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Alignvest Student Housing Inc.
ashsubscriptions@alignvest.com

The information is based on the market analysis and expectations of ASH REIT and should not be relied upon by the reader as research or investment advice regarding ASH REIT. The information presented herein is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy in any jurisdiction where prohibited by law or where contrary to local law or regulation. Any such offer to invest, if made, will only be made by means of an offering memorandum on a private placement basis.

Alignvest – June 30, 2024 Management Report

by on August 13, 2024 with No Comments

We are pleased to send you Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust’s Q2 2024 Management Report.

The first half of 2024 has been exceptionally busy for us! After spending most of 2023 cultivating and developing our acquisition pipeline, we were able to move quickly to secure several opportunities with vendors when interest rates stabilized after peaking in Q4 2023.

We kicked off the year in February with the acquisition of 417Nelson in Ottawa. This was a transaction we worked to source for over five years before it finally became actionable. In Q2 2024, we acquired 308 King, Fergus House and Hespeler House, all assets located in Waterloo, through proprietary relationships with the respective vendors. These acquisitions give us further scale in the market and let us effectively leverage our operating platform. We then acquired The Link in Montreal, which is ideally located near Concordia University, and gives us an entry into another attractive market for student housing.

With these acquisitions completed, we have solidified our position as the leading off campus student housing provider in Canada. We now have a portfolio of 7,159 beds across 17 properties in seven university markets across the country.

We are now focused on integrating these acquisitions and optimizing our overall portfolio as we get ready for the start of the 2024/2025 academic year. Our current occupancy (including newly acquired assets) is strong at almost 97%. Our pre-leasing continues to be robust, and we are expecting another year of strong rent growth.

In 2024, we have continued to deliver strong results to our investors, including a 6.5% YTD return as of June 30, 2024, and a 12.5% annualized return since inception (both are to Class F unitholders participating in our DRIP).

Below is the link to our Management Report. We have also included a link to our Q2 2024 Financial Statements. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Management Report

Q2 Financial Statements

 

Acquisition of 1680 Lincoln Avenue in Montreal

by on June 27, 2024 with No Comments

We are pleased to announce that we have completed the acquisition of a purpose-built student accommodation property located at 1680 Lincoln Avenue, Montreal, Quebec (known as The Link).

The Link is a newly constructed, 18-storey building located steps away from Concordia University and within walking distance of McGill University. The property is equipped with 246 beds in 101 fully furnished units, including studios, two-, three-, and four-bedroom suites, which provides a wide variety of configurations for potential tenants. Additionally, The Link features several amenities, including a fitness room, social rooms, a rooftop terrace, smart package lockers, and an underground parking garage.

This strategic acquisition further diversifies our REIT’s portfolio and solidifies our position as the leading owner and operator of Canadian student housing. With this acquisition, we own in excess of 7,100 student housing beds across Canada. Further, this acquisition marks our entry into Montreal, which is home to several universities and colleges in need of housing for their students.

Below is the link to the full press release. We have also included a link to an overview presentation of The Link.

Press Release

 

Overview Presentation

 

Information Sheet

Alignvest Student Housing – Closing of Acquisitions

by on June 25, 2024 with No Comments

We are pleased to announce that we have completed the acquisition of two purpose-built student accommodation assets located at 252 and 254 Phillip Street, Waterloo, Ontario (known as Hespeler House and Fergus House, respectively).

Hespeler House and Fergus House are each 21-storey student housing buildings with 476 beds in fully furnished four-bedroom/four-bathroom suites. The properties are steps away from the University of Waterloo and within walking distance from Wilfrid Laurier University. The properties have amenities which include fitness rooms, study rooms, a fully enclosed theatre room, games rooms, a basketball court, underground parking, bicycle parking, and on-site laundry.

With the closing of these acquisitions, Alignvest Student Housing REIT has completed four transactions in the first half of 2024 totaling 1,705 beds and $384 million. We are excited to further solidify our position in Waterloo and believe these assets will benefit from the scale we have in the market. Hespeler House and Fergus House are strategically located near the University of Waterloo, whereas our other assets in Waterloo primarily serve students attending Wilfrid Laurier University. In total, we now provide housing for over 6,900 students in six major higher-education markets across Canada.

Below is the link to the full press release.

Press Release

 

Alignvest Student Housing

by on May 28, 2024 with No Comments

COMPLETION OF ACQUISITION OF 308 KING IN WATERLOO, ONTARIO

We are pleased to announce that we have completed the previously-announced transaction to acquire a residential property located at 308 King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario (“308 King”).

308 King is a newly constructed, 25-storey building with 340 furnished units, providing housing for 659 students. The property is located within walking distance of both Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. The property offers on-site laundry, rooftop terraces with barbeques and lounge areas, an above-grade parking garage and bicycle parking. There is over 8,500 square feet of ground floor commercial space.

With the addition of 308 King, Alignvest Student Housing REIT will own a portfolio that provides housing for over 5,900 students across 14 properties in six university-focused Canadian markets. We are excited to have built a high-quality portfolio of student housing valued at over $1 billion in less than six years since our launch in June 2018, and we have several additional growth initiatives planned for 2024.

Below is the link to the full press release.

Press Release

May 2024 Information Sheet

ASH – Management Report

by on May 8, 2024 with No Comments

MARCH 31, 2024 – MANAGEMENT REPORT

 

We are pleased to send you Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust’s Q1 2024 Management Report.

We have had a very busy start to 2024 and are expecting a  successful year for our REIT. The macroeconomic environment has shown signs of stabilization and opportunity. Interest rates have come down from their peak in Q4 2023. Further, CMHC financing has become more accessible to developers and investors, which has materially impacted our ability to positively underwrite acquisitions.

We kicked off the year with the acquisition of 417Nelson in Ottawa in February. This site nicely complements our other Ottawa properties and is conveniently located only a few minutes walk from the University of Ottawa.  Continuing our growth trajectory, in April we announced the acquisition of 308 King in Waterloo, with an expected closing in late May. It’s important to note that we have spent several years working to secure both of these transactions. Our deep relationships and expertise provide us with a unique advantage compared to other investors in the sector. We have a robust pipeline of additional acquisition opportunities for continued growth.

Our 2024 pre-leasing season is off to a strong start. We are already almost 83% pre-leased for September 2024 at our privately-managed properties and are projecting a 21.8% gap-to-market on sitting rents when compared to current tenant lease rates. We are also pleased to confirm that the Canadian governments recent announcements to reduce the number of international student visas has not impacted the demand we continue to experience across our portfolio.

We are pleased with the results we have delivered to our investors, including a 3.2% return in Q1 2024 and 12.4% annualized since inception (both are to Class F unitholders participating in our DRIP). With a strong acquisition pipeline in front of us, we are actively raising capital to pursue multiple opportunities and continue our expansion across Canada. The future looks strong, and we are confident in our strategy and the corresponding returns for our investors.

 

Below is the link to our Management Report. We have also included links to our Q1 2024 Financial Statements and 2023 Audited Financial Statements. Please contact us if you have any questions.

 

Q1 2024 Management Report

Q1 2024 Financial Statements

2023 Audited Financial Statements

Alignvest Student Housing Acquisition

by on April 22, 2024 with No Comments
ACQUISITION OF HIGH-QUALITY ASSET IN WATERLOO, ONTARIO

We are pleased to announce that we have entered into a binding contract to purchase a residential property located at 308 King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario (“308 King”).

308 King is a newly constructed, 25-storey building with 340 furnished units, providing housing for 659 students. The property is located within walking distance of both Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. The property offers on-site laundry, rooftop terraces with barbeques and lounge areas, an above-grade parking garage and bicycle parking. There is over 8,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space.

With the addition of 308 King, Alignvest Student Housing REIT will own a portfolio that provides housing for almost 6,000 students across 14 properties in six university-focused Canadian markets.

The acquisition is scheduled to close in May 2024. Below is the link to the full press release announcing the acquisition of 308 King.

 

Press Release - 308 King Acquisition

April 2024 Information Sheet

Student Housing Acquitistion

by on March 5, 2024 with No Comments

ACQUISITION OF HIGH-QUALITY STUDENT HOUSING ASSET IN OTTAWA, ONTARIO

We are pleased to announce the acquisition of a purpose-built student accommodation asset located at 417 Nelson Street, Ottawa, Ontario (“417Nelson”).

417Nelson is a modern 4-storey building with 94 beds in 53 fully furnished units. The property is in close proximity to our other Ottawa properties, which allows for operational efficiencies and enables us to continue to provide high-quality accommodation to students in the area. With this acquisition, we were able to assume attractive in-place CMHC financing which has a below-market interest rate of 2.32% and over six years of remaining term.

With the addition of 417Nelson, Alignvest Student Housing REIT now owns a portfolio of over 5,300 beds across 13 properties in six university-focused Canadian markets.

 

Below is the link to the full press release announcing the acquisition of 417Nelson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Press Release - 417Nelson Acquisition February 2024 Information Sheet

Alignvest – Management Report

by on February 7, 2024 with No Comments
Management Report – December 31, 2023

We are pleased to send you Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust’s Q4 2023 Management Report. 2023 was a successful year for the REIT. We started the year with a flagship property acquisition in Halifax, which expanded our presence into Eastern Canada. Our entire portfolio has delivered strong operating performance, resulting in a 21.4% return to Class F shareholders (with DRIP participation). With the growth in NOI, our portfolio is valued at $961.8 million, an increase of over 15% over the year.

The macroeconomic environment was more stable in the second half of 2023, with inflation decreasing to 4.0% or below since May and the 5-year GoC bond yield dropping over 25% since the end of Q3. We spent much of 2023 focused on building our acquisition and investment pipeline to be ready when deals became actionable. In Q4, with a robust pipeline, we were able to re-open the REIT for subscriptions. We appreciate everyone’s patience with us as we needed more visibility on our ability to put capital to work before taking in additional cash from subscriptions.

In Q4, we completed our equity investment in the partnership that acquired 149 College Street, a 43,118 square foot building in Toronto, steps away from the University of Toronto. We also entered into a contract to acquire a student housing property in a market where we already have operations, with an expected closing date in Q1 2024. In addition, we are in due diligence on multiple additional opportunities.

Our 2024 pre-leasing season is off to a strong start. We are already almost 60% pre-leased at our privately-managed properties for September 2024 and are projecting a 15.1% gap-to-market on sitting rents when compared to budgeted September 2024 lease rates.

Over the past several weeks, the Canadian government has issued new rules and caps applicable to international students. In particular, the focus seems to be targeted to colleges, where we have no exposure. As we stated in our response (link below), we do not believe these changes will have a material impact on our portfolio.

We are expecting to deliver strong performance in 2024 given our market leading position and our strong business fundamentals.  With a strong acquisition pipeline in front of us, we are actively raising capital to pursue these opportunities. The future looks strong, and we are confident in our strategy and the corresponding returns for our investors.

 

Below is the link to our Q4 2023 Management Report.

 

Q4 2023 Management Report Our Response to Canada's Cap on International Students

Alignvest Student Housing – Canada’s Cap on International Students

by on January 25, 2024 with No Comments

On Monday, Canada announced that it is capping the number of international students for two years, with the cap for 2024 at 360,000 students, a decrease of 35% from 2023.

In addition, post-graduate work permits will no longer be available for students in schools under a private-public partnership model and work permits will only be offered to spouses of students enrolled in masters, doctoral and professional programs.

The full news release is available at “Canada to stabilize growth and decrease number of new international student permits issued to approximately 360,000 for 2024 – Canada.ca”.

In the media, the Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, has said, “the main reason for the cap is to protect students who attend colleges, which are often private-public partnerships, that provide inadequate services at high costs, but also to ease pressure on housing and services. Some private institutions have taken advantage of international students by operating under-resourced campuses, lacking supports for students and charging high tuition fees, all the while significantly increasing their intake of international students.” [Source: Canada to cap international student permits amid housing crunch | Reuters]

OUR ANALYSIS

The cap represents a limit on the number of study permits that will be issued to students who want to come to Canada in the future, not the total number of international students in Canada. There are already an estimated 900,000 international students in Canada that can continue their studies.

While the cap represents a material cut in comparison to 2023, it is still substantially higher than the 256,000 study permits issued in 2020. Over the past three years, the number of permits issued annually has ballooned – this has been fuelled by both growth at universities and also due to rapid growth of colleges operating under private-public partnerships. It is really the latter scenario that Canada is seeking to control.

In fact, the University of Toronto welcomed the announcement and said it would work with all levels of government on the allocation of study permits. The changes are “focused on addressing abuses in the system by particular actors and are not intended to adversely impact universities such as ours,” the university said in a statement. [Source: Canada to cap international student permits amid housing crunch | Reuters]

HOW WILL THIS IMPACT US?

  • Our portfolio consists of 12 properties in six tier-one university markets across Canada. In particular, our properties are located in Halifax (Dalhousie), Ottawa (uOttawa), Oshawa (Ontario Tech), Hamilton (McMaster), Waterloo (Laurier and Waterloo) and Edmonton (University of Alberta). We do not target students attending colleges and have no exposure to colleges operating under private-public partnerships.
  • Based on our tenant survey results, our current tenant base consists of 73.5% domestic students and 26.5% international students. Since we do not target first-year students (who typically live in on-campus residences), our average exposure is less than 9% per year, assuming an equal split between second, third and fourth-year students.
  • The cap represents a 35% cut, which we expect will impact colleges more than universities. However, assuming that universities are equally impacted, we could potentially see our annual intake reduce from ~9% to ~6%. At most of our properties, we have healthy waiting lists of students seeking live in our buildings. We are very confident that we will be able manage the challenge of filling up to 3% of our beds that were previously occupied by international students.
  • As of January 18, 2024, we are 57% pre-leased for the September 2024/25 school year, which is in line with this time last year. We still have over seven months before the start of the school year. We are actively increasing our marketing efforts towards targeting domestic students. In particular, we are actively engaged in promoting a “student life” experience and working with universities to sponsor and support athletics and campus life.

 

In summary, we remain confident that the high quality of our portfolio will continue to attract university students. The changes announced by the Canadian government will have an immaterial impact on our portfolio and we will continue to build and deliver Canada’s leading student housing platform.

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