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Los Angeles

For Sale: Student housing complex near USC campus

Blue Vista Capital bought 1,700-bed University Gateway in 2012 for $204M

Blue Vista's Peter Stelian and 3335 South Figueroa Street (Blue Vista, LiveGW)
Blue Vista's Peter Stelian and 3335 South Figueroa Street (Blue Vista, LiveGW)

A pricey student housing complex across the street from the USC campus is for sale, The Real Deal has learned.

CBRE is marketing the 421-unit property at 3335 South Figueroa Street with roughly 1,700 beds, according to materials from the brokerage obtained by TRD. CBRE’s Jaclyn Fitts, William Vonderfecht and Casey Schaefer are listing the property for sale.

CBRE did not disclose the owner, but records show Chicago-based Blue Vista Capital bought the property for $203.5 million in 2012. Blue Vista purchased the building on behalf of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, a public employees pension fund, according to reports at the time.

Blue Vista did not respond to a request for comment.

The property is currently 99 percent leased, but has not been upgraded since it was built in 2010, according to CBRE.

Rents at the complex, named University Gateway, currently range from $1,230 for a shared two-bedroom unit to $3,900 for a private one-bedroom, according to online listings. In marketing materials, CBRE said rents are currently below competing properties — matching rents could generate almost $100,000 more for a new owner.

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The building also has about 77,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

Student housing has become a target for institutional investors over the last few years, given a shortage of on-campus housing and the fact that vacancies during the pandemic only rose marginally.

Overall occupancy across student housing fell about 4 percent from the 2019-2020 to the 2020-2021 academic year, according to CBRE. Colleges in states that had looser pandemic restrictions saw less declines.

In April, Blackstone agreed to buy American Campus Communities — the largest publicly traded student housing owner and developer in the U.S. — for roughly $13 billion.

Colleges are also getting more competitive, with acceptance rates at some schools dropping, giving investors peace of mind that someone will always fill a bed near campus. At USC, the acceptance rate has dropped from 16 percent in 2017 to under 12 percent in 2022.

Schools with robust football programs, like USC, have generated greater interest from institutional investors, CBRE’s Jaclyn Fitts told TRD’s Deconstruct podcast in April.

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Commercial Real EstateLA MultifamilyStudent HousingUsc