Kennedy Wilson Picks up Atlanta Student Housing Tower

An off-campus student housing tower in the heart of Midtown Atlanta changed hands in a nine-figure deal, landing with a global real estate investor as part of a much larger portfolio sale.

Kinetic, a 752-bed student housing property at 1025 Spring Street in Atlanta, sold for just over $132 million this month, according to Fulton County deed records and first reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The buyer was a limited liability company tied to California-based investment firm Kennedy Wilson, Georgia business filings show. The seller was Peachtree Kinetic Owner, an entity linked to Toll Brothers, the Pennsylvania-based luxury homebuilder that developed the project.

The sale is one piece of a sweeping transaction between the two companies. In September, Kennedy Wilson announced it had agreed to acquire Toll Brothers Apartment Living, the homebuilder’s multifamily business, in a deal valued at more than $300 million. The agreement includes not just stabilized buildings like Kinetic, but also Toll Brothers’ in-house multifamily development team.

Kennedy Wilson Chairman and CEO William McMorrow said in a statement that the broader transaction will ultimately shift more than $5 billion in assets under management from Toll Brothers to Kennedy Wilson.

While an initial wave of multifamily closings wrapped on Dec. 5, the firm disclosed in a same-day SEC filing that closings for the remaining properties have been pushed to early next year, the Chronicle reported.

Toll Brothers Chairman and CEO Douglas Yearley Jr. said in a statement that the sale unlocks capital for the firm’s stockholders and allows for a renewed focus on the homebuilding side of the business.

Kinetic is a high-profile property within the portfolio. Construction on the tower wrapped last year, with students moving in ahead of the fall semester. The 239-unit building offers a mix of one- through five-bedroom units and sits just east of Georgia Tech’s campus, which has helped insulate student housing from some of the volatility hitting conventional multifamily.

The sale price pencils out to roughly $175,000 per bed. Georgia Tech enrollment remains steady, the publication reported, and Midtown development is still humming.

The building is packed with amenities designed to compete for renters in a crowded Midtown market, including a sky lounge, a fitness center with a sauna and an e-sports gaming lounge.— Eric Weilbacher