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

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

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

Change is Coming – Always Improving

by on February 7, 2024 with No Comments

At MFG, our Mission Statement is to be “Always improving”. Over the past 15 months, we have been refining the process of how we can better deliver our investment platform to our clients. Utilizing partnerships and data collected over the years, we’ve come up with a solution that we believe will improve our investment platform and improve our clients overall experience with MFG.

What is Changing?

We are transitioning to an investment model platform. Working with your Portfolio Manager, it will be determined which model is appropriate for you. Once this has been determined, you will own one or more of the new MFG Investment Models – Aggressive, Growth, and/or Balanced. These new Model Funds are built using the best investment managers and strategies that our team has researched. The platform utilizes the same investment philosophies of delivering an institutional quality portfolio to our clients.

The Benefits to our Clients

1. Increased Performance

    – Via enhanced portfolio construction and efficient management capabilities

2. Time spent with your Portfolio Manager

   – Spend more time focusing on other value add areas of your financial lives – IE: financial planning, insurance analysis, tax work, etc.

3. Communication will be improved through detailed Quarterly Reports

   – These reports will include facts about the Model Fund, general market commentary and additional information that our PM Division finds relevant to our clients

 

When to Expect the Change – April 1st, 2024

We are very excited to be able to deliver this new and improved platform to our clients. There has been a lot of work put in by our team to get us to this point. As we approach April 1st, you can expect to receive multiple communication pieces from our team diving into deeper details on the upcoming changes. If you have any questions on the upcoming change and what it might look like for you personally, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your MFG Portfolio Manager.

We want to thank you for your continued trust and support of MFG. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Stay tuned.

 

PDF Version

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.

StoreWest Bluebird Development Fund Q3 Report

by on November 2, 2023 with No Comments

StoreWest Bluebird Development Fund

The StoreWest Bluebird Self-Storage Development Fund (“The Fund”) is off to a fantastic start. 3projects have begun construction, 4-6 projects have the potential to begin construction by next spring, and new opportunities are being presented to us on a weekly basis. We are very happy with the pace of progress thus far.

Q3 2023 Development Fund Report

StoreWest Bluebird Development Fund Q2 Report

by on November 2, 2023 with No Comments

StoreWest Bluebird Development Fund 

The Fund’s investment objective is to achieve capital appreciation through the development and sale of Class A self-storage projects across Canada.

 

Q2 2023 Report

Alignvest Student Housing – Q2 2023 Management Report

by on August 3, 2023 with No Comments

JUNE 30, 2023 – MANAGEMENT REPORT

 

We are pleased to send you Alignvest Student Housing Real Estate Investment Trust’s Q2 2023 Management Report. We launched ASH REIT in June 2018, with the objective of consolidating the Canadian student housing real estate sector. Over the past five years, we have successfully grown to become Canada’s largest university-focused student housing owner/operator, with 5,208 beds across our 12 properties.

Over this period, we have been battle-tested, first through the pandemic, and then with rising inflation and interest rates. Through all of this, our portfolio has proven to be resilient and continued to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns to our investors. We have delivered an 11.9% annualized net return since inception, with limited volatility.

With strong pre-leasing, we are at ~93% occupancy for September 2023 with strong growth in rental rates. We are on target to deliver ~$42.5 million of net operating income for the 2023/2024 academic year. The strength of our portfolio is reflected in the increasing value of our properties, which were appraised at $945.3 million as of June 30, 2023.

We continue to monitor and effectively manage our capital structure to optimize our returns. We have an attractive loan-to-value ratio of 47% on our mortgage debt, with a weighted average interest rate of 3.47% and staggered maturity dates. With the growth in our property values, we are confident that we will be able to effectively refinance our maturing debt in 2024 and 2025.

As of June 30, 2023, we have liquidity of $43.6 million. This is sufficient to manage our day-to-day working capital requirements, service normal-course redemptions and complete our next acquisition. Accordingly, to optimize our returns, on May 26, 2023, we announced a temporary suspension of acceptance of subscriptions for units of the REIT. We expect to announce an end to the suspension in Fall 2023.

As we reflect on the past five years, we would like to thank our investors who have supported us on this journey. We look forward to delivering continued growth and strong results.

Below are the links to our Q2 2023 Management Report and Q2 2023 Financial Statements. Please contact us if you have any questions or need additional information.

 

Q2 2023 Management Report Q2 2023 Financial Statements
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