The American company Valeo Groupe has chosen 22@ to locate the first student residence of the LIV Student chain in Barcelona. Through the venture capital fund VStudent, it has acquired a plot on Puigcerdà street with a buildable area of 15,400 square meters where it plans to build a residence that could open next year. The purchase, which was advised by Savills Aguirre Newman, also includes a 2,500 square meter office building on the same street.
VStudent is an investment vehicle whose shareholders are the American group Valeo and two Spanish partners: Bankinter and the management company Plenium Partners. Its objective is to create a new player in the Spanish student residence market, so VStudent is responsible for the promotion of the properties and Valeo Group for the management of the residences through the LIV Student brand. Currently, this fund already has five projects under development totaling 2,800 beds in Seville, Granada, Porto, and Barcelona that are expected to open in the next two years.
In parallel, Valeo has implemented the LIV Student chain in Ireland and the United Kingdom, where it already has two residences in operation in Dublin and Sheffield and another project in Belfast. Valeo is a real estate group founded by Ted W. Rollins, an American businessman with more than 30 years of experience in the sector who was the architect of Campus Crest, a start up that is now listed on the stock exchange and became the second largest student accommodation company in the world.
In 2019, Valeo announced its arrival in the Spanish market, with the forecast of promoting up to 20,000 student residence places, one of the most fashionable assets within the real estate sector as an alternative to the residential, commercial, or office segments. Its idea was to allocate between 300 million and 400 million to establish itself in Spain and Portugal and compete with other groups such as Resa or Nexo. To do this, they allied with Bankinter, which created a specific investment product in this sector for its private banking clients. The goal is for the LIV Student brand to have a presence in the country's main student cities.
According to Savills Aguirre Newman, this acquisition by VStudent demonstrates "that investor interest in Barcelona remains despite the current health context." "This transaction confirms investors' attraction to 22@, thanks to its unique positioning in Europe and its ability to attract talent," says Carlos Bajo, one of the heads of Savills in Barcelona. The expert recalls that 22@ concentrated 47% of the office investment volume in Barcelona in 2020.
This purchase adds to the recent acquisition of the Diagonal 123 office building, acquired by Metropolis from the Bernat family for 55 million. In parallel, this same month the manager DWS has bought the One Parc Central tower for 128 million.