The Chicago based firm Harrison Street has launched the fourth fund of its Europe-focused series.
According to multiple reports, the firm is said to be approaching a close for its Harrison Street European Property Partners IV fund. While Harrison Partners has not commented officially on the fund, an SEC filing indicates that it is looking to raise €1.5bn.
It is also understood that the fund will have a minimum of 80% of its assets being in sustainable investments.
Harrison Street wrote: “The fund will pursue a strategy to target student accommodation, healthcare assets (including senior housing), life sciences and other specialty residential investments (such as micro-housing, the private rented sector, serviced apartments and co-living) in Europe and the United Kingdom. The fund will invest in these assets directly or indirectly, through joint ventures and/or other debt and/or equity interests.”
According to the firm, it is a ‘leading investment management’ company exclusively focused on alternative real assets. It says that since 2005, it has invested over $65bn across senior housing, student housing, healthcare delivery, life sciences and storage real estate as well as social and utility infrastructure. This report in PERE indicates that it entered the European market eight years ago.
The issue of investment within student accommodation has been a topic approached on this site in recent years. In 2021, Expert Investor published a piece, ‘Will investing in student housing always balance the books?’, asking whether such investments are the lock-grip solution they were being proffered as.
This latest announcement comes a few weeks after Harrison Street said that it had appointed Alexis Gisselbrecht as its managing director for portfolio management. Based in London, the firm said that Gisselbrecht will lead the portfolio management function in Europe and oversee the performance of Harrison Street’s European investment vehicles.
The firm also said at the time that William Fagan was to join the firm as managing director and head of its Luxembourg office.
Harrison Street launched its European platform in 2015, and since then has built a team of nearly 50 executives dedicated to the platform located across the firm’s four European offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Luxembourg.
