Blue Sky Private Real Estate and Goldman Sachs, who recently formed a joint venture to invest in Australia's student accommodation sector, has just purchased a majority stake in leading Australian student accommodation provider The PAD.

Blue Sky Private Real Estate is a division of ASX listed Blue Sky Alternative Investments.

The majority share was bought from Telopea Capital executives Stephen Gaitanos and Craig Carracher. The PAD will manage the joint venture’s student accommodation assets as the parties build a $1 billion portfolio of 5,000 to 10,000 purpose built student accommodation beds across Australia and New Zealand over the next few years.

The PAD has been operating for almost 10 years in Australia and currently manages accommodation for nearly 2,000 students. Damian Haber, founder and chief executive of The PAD, will continue as a joint shareholder.  

Currently, Australia has less than seven purpose built student accommodation beds for every 100 students, compared to almost 25 in the UK, with very few participants servicing the market.

Education is Australia’s largest non-resource export industry, worth in excess of $18 billion per annum. Twenty-seven Australian universities are currently ranked in the global top 500 and the country currently attracts the fifth largest number of international students, behind the USA, UK, Germany and France.